So What's Your Exit, Honey?

I grew up in the shadow of the Long Island Expressway. When my parents were considering buying the house, they drove over at various times to sit in front of the house to listen to the new "superhighway" that had been recently completed just steps from their new home. They determined the new road was not that loud.

When people would visit, especially during the summer, when windows would be open in our un-air conditioned home, they would come down in the morning, asking, "How do you sleep with that noise?" We would usually respond, "What noise?" The road noise was part of the background and we didn't even hear it anymore.

Going to one of the university centers of the State University of New York, especially one that was frequented by residents of Long Island, one would often introduce yourself by telling what exit you lived off of. I remember one weekend, visiting a friend who was at Oswego State, bumping into a guy several times at a party. We would greet each other with "32!" and "43!"

Living near the expressway gave us some exciting moments as well. I remember a trucker's strike in the late 1970s or early 1980s, when many truckers staged a demonstration on the LIE that slowed the road beyond its normal rush hour crawl. There were the jackknifed tractor trailers (I remember one particularly, a truck carrying canned applesauce) that brought gawkers to look and the inevitable "rubber necking" delays. The LIE was also the scene of the final exits for musician Harry Chapin and director Alan J. Pakula.


On Monday, when I left to return home, I got on the road by about 6:40am, knowing that I needed to be out that early if I had any chance to beat some of the traffic. However, an overnight accident on the Northern State Parkway, which parallels the expressway, changed my plans.



What I had expected to be about a one-hour commute to the George Washington Bridge, took me an hour and a half. And I never even got on the LIE, I road what is known in CB lingo as the "balcony" or the service road that parallels the main road. While I am not in the picture at right (those poor suckers were on the Northern State), everybody else did go over to the LIE causing major backups all morning.

In a future post (which I've already written), I will share with you, my visions for helping the traffic issues on Long Island and in DC as well.