ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 2, 1997 TAG: 9702030009
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
COLUMN: new river journal
SOURCE: GERRY DAVIES
I tell people about my long drive to work, and they nod sympathetically.
"An hour each way? Two hours a day on the road? How awful," they say.
Well, yes and no.
If you think of it as spending 520 hours - almost 22 days - each year doing nothing but slogging to and from work, it's pretty depressing.
On the other hand, I got to see the dancing commuter.
More on him later.
I don't have numbers on this, but I'm sure I'm not alone on the New River-to-Roanoke commute. The valley offers so many good places to live that I can't be the only one sacrificing time for location.
You want big ol' college towns? We got 'em. Semi-rustic small towns? Got 'em. Hideaways in the hills and valleys? Got 'em.
It's a pity I can't work here, too, but it's nothing new for me.
I'm a veteran long-distance commuter. Did it by train and subway to New York City for several years. Did it by car in New England for several more, going 65 miles each way on two-lane country roads. Left rural New Hampshire at 1:45 a.m. and got to less-rural New Hampshire by 3 a.m.
Maybe I'm genetically predisposed to this. Dad did it for 30-some years, navigating the Schuykill (a.k.a. "Sure-kill") Expressway through Philadelphia.
He hated it.
I'm a little more accepting.
Sure, there's something oppressive about heading out the door in Roanoke after a night of fast food, bad coffee, surly reporters and snarling editors and knowing you still face an hour on the road - and that you'll be sharing that road with 3,000 tractor-trailers, any one of which could squash your little sedan like a bug.
But if I wasn't doing all this commuting, I might have missed out on:
nThe intriguingly named Butt Hollow Road, which I cross over twice a day in Roanoke County.
I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for calling something Butt Hollow Road, and I don't want to know it. I much prefer my own, which came to me in a vision in the wee hours one morning just as the caffeine wore off: The first white settler of that part of the county was a skinny-rumped Englishman whom the Iroquois derisively described with their equivalent of "pencil neck."
As in: "Psst, Squeaking Eagle, look at him. His butt hollow! Hee hee hee!"
I figure if I post this on the Internet enough times, or maybe just e-mail it to Pierre Salinger, it'll soon be accepted historical truth.
Expect to see it in your kids' term papers in the near future.
nSouthwestern Virginia driving habits.
The first time I drove Interstate 81, a road crew was at work and a lane was closed. The usual signs were posted miles ahead: "Road Work. Right Lane Closed." The unwritten message, of course, was: "Get out of the right lane, dummy."
And all the dummies did, veering smoothly and serenely into the left lane with a half-mile to spare.
It's the rapture, I thought, having just moved from a region where the practice is to merge only when you can read the label on the traffic cones, thereby jamming up traffic and reducing the surplus population. Anything more reveals you to be puny and testosterone-deprived because ... um, well, just because.
The rapture faded when a young lady in Roanoke, using the universal language of the road, flashed me half a peace sign - the middle half - when I got in the way of a 70-mph, across-three-lanes dash for her exit.
It vanished completely when a trucker changing lanes sent me into a ditch.
nThe dancing commuter.
There he was, rolling along ahead of me on U.S. 460 in Christiansburg, bouncing around behind the wheel, jerking and shaking uncontrollably, arms flailing, clearly in the midst of a seizure.
I wondered what to do. Pull over and call 911? Stick with him until he came to a stop? Could I remember enough first aid to be any help?
Then I pulled up next to him at a light by the New River Valley Mall and realized there was a certain rhythm to his seizure.
Then I heard the music. Pounding music.
He wasn't sick.
I watched him drive away.
The commute didn't seem quite as long that day.
Gerry Davies is night metro editor at The Roanoke Times. He lives in Blacksburg.
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