You can see the freeway divided

[austin_dern]

I never got around to finishing my report of the trip to Philadelphia, did I? Last I mentioned my father and I had gotten into an argument about when to start because he wouldn't say when to start explicitly. On the road, the next argument we got into was how to get on the Interstate. We agreed on the road I should take, as it happened the same Interstate I take to get to my extruded office product each day. So I was heading for the county road bridge over the Interstate, to take the on-ramp from there. As I was making the last turn to this bridge, my father complained that I was taking a ridiculously long zig-zagging route, and rather than turn that into a fresh fight I gave in to the way he wanted to go. This involved taking the road which goes over the Interstate in the opposite direction, going away from it. Then we took a couple county roads which were narrower and had lower speeds than the Interstate but which roughly paralleled it as nearly as roads in this county can parallel one another (they're very non-Euclidean around here), and turned onto a county road bridge one exit down on the Interstate. Clearly we were headed for an exciting adventure.

The next quarrel was at the park-and-ride where we were to park, meet my brother and my sister's boyfriend -- the one who'd never seen Philadelphia before -- and somehow get into Philadelphia. I'd thought it might be by train, but it turned out to be by the boyfriend's car, to his surprise as much as anyone's. He's got a very large car, about the size of a 7-Eleven, and it's bright orange, so if you've been on the East Coast the past year you've probably seen it. I had thought we might park in the very many wide-open and unoccupied parking lots (since it was a Sunday there was rather little parking to ride going on), but my father wanted to use the parking garage. We also got into little spats about where I should turn in, since at no point were the two of us ever looking at the directional signs of the same intersection at the same time.

Eventually we made it in, with my father giving directions to the boyfriend which included explanations of every business which had ever used to be in the Trenton or the Philadelphia area, which is quite the list. A remarkable number of his uncles and cousins worked at them (my grandfather had about 60 brothers and sisters who lived through childhood, and his father had a really big family), so by the time it was all done the poor guy had absolutely no idea what he had seen, but was certain he'd had it adequately explained.

Trivia: Clyde Tombaugh was drafted in July 1943 to teach navigation for the Army in Flagstaff. Source: Planets Beyond: Discovering the Outer Solar System, Mark Littmann.

Currently Reading: The Power of News: The History of Reuters 1849 - 1989, Donald Read.