THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, February 4, 1995 TAG: 9502030026
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A13 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: George Hebert
LENGTH: Medium: 53 lines
It's not like Yogi Berra's ``deja vu all over again,'' but it's a similarly weird experience.
This one is more of a wondering as to exactly what's going on right now.
I'm thinking of a feeling I sometimes get while driving up an expressway on-ramp.
Several times over the years I have steered into the arc of pavement leading to some superhighway, and then - with both the road I've left and the big road ahead out of sight - I've suddenly found myself in a momentary panic.
Where, in the spaghetti world of traffic loops, was I?
Hundreds of traffic ramps, from the driver's viewpoint, look exactly alike once you're in the process of negotiating them. Landmarks disappear or spin by, blurred and unrecognized in your whirling peripheral vision. You can't give much more than a corner of your eye to such things as you hug the sweep of pavement. And right at that moment, if your mind has strayed in the slightest, you may realize you don't know which of many such ramps you are moving along.
The same thing can happen with certain stretches of straight roadway, particualarly in city areas where man's works occupy the whole scene you are passing through. When you're tootling along a stretch of cookie-cutter dwellings and/or apartments, I don't think it's particularly surprising once in a while to wonder which cookie-cutter neighborhood you're in at any given moment.
Or coming up to a batch of traffic lights at night, with six lanes of cars rolling in or out in each direction, and spotting nothing distinctive about the location (heaven forbid that there should be any highly visible street signs), almost anyone, and not just the foggy-brained, might go through a few seconds of lostness. Maybe more than a few.
To put the problem in a larger framework, but dealing with that very plague of modern sameness, think about certain commercial parts of most American communities.
Think about those roadside arrays of fast-food operations, auto sales lots, service stations and martial-arts schools, inserted in the gaps between dreary strip malls.
You could be in the outskirts of Toledo or Orlando or Albuquerque, and be forced to stop and think before recalling which.
It's a wonder that more us don't feel lost more of the time.
MEMO: Mr. Hebert is a former editor of The Ledger-Star.
by CNB