I almost forgot this but while out walking Friday shortly after mid-day I remembered a moment from my walk the previous day. I understand the whole, 'pictures or it didn't happen' but my hands were otherwise engaged and I couldn't work my cellphone even if I'd thought of it.
Just steps from our house, actually halfway up the block and then across Washington Street, is Chelsea Parade, a pocket park as I call it whose origins predate the founding of Our Republic. It separates Washington Street from Broadway, with the two streets connected by Chelsea Parade South (we used to also have a Chelsea Parade North but that was turfed over a number of years ago for reasons that I heard but never really appreciated).
While out walking Thursday I watched more cars than I could count reach the intersection of Broadway and Chelsea Parade South and staring at the "No Turn on Red" sign to their immediate right, go ahead and make that very turn despite having a stop signal. In the course of the hour or so that I walk Chelsea Parade I'd guesstimate about every fourth or fifth vehicle decides to blow off the light and just slides right around the corner.
I smile because almost all of the scofflaws are members of my tribe: older, white guys who somehow know we're more or less invisible to local law enforcement and are comfortably confident we won't be pulled over. Some might suggest a form of 'white privilege but I think of it as arrogance born from being told we are God's Special Creatures (because most of our lives we've been treated as such). And the folks ignoring the law don't see themselves as bad people they just have better things to do than wait at a traffic signal.
Anyway, a little after one in the afternoon I watched a later model Subaru Forester coming down Chelsea Parade South and there was just something about the way the car rolled that I knew it wasn't stopping. And I was almost right. It didn't stop at the red light at all but, surprise!, made a left-hand turn onto Broadway heading towards Backus Hospital.
I stopped. Yelled. Threw both arms up in the air, and extended the middle fingers on both hands as the Forester, a sort of golden color with a Sacred Heart School sticker on the tailgate, passed me with two nuns, Sisters of Charity if I remember my habits correctly, in the front seat.
In a perfect world, they'd have either blessed me or flipped me off. Sadly, a perfect world is two more exits north on 395.
-bill kenny
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