THE INVASION, Part One
Invasions are nothing new to “civilization”. The years 1066 and the invasion of the Normans (to England), 1938 and the invasion of the Nazis (into Poland), and 1966 and the invasion of the Japanese Tourists (to New York City) are three incursions that readily come to mind. Even our language is loaded with such terminology. Take football for instance: The purpose of the game is to invade the other teams territory (past the 50 yard line), gain as much “ground” as you can, conquering the area in 10 yard increments (first downs), until you bring the ball across the goal line and score (a touchdown). You can do this over and over again until you conquer your enemy (win the game). Usually your opponent puts up a good fight. But that isn’t always the case.
It has been said (or at least this is what I think I heard while snoozing in the teacher’s lounge) that the day before the Visogoths sacked and pillared Rome in 410 AD, that the people of this ancient city gazed upon the barbarian hordes, who were camped upon a high plateau above the city, with an almost childlike sense of astonishment wondering what all the commotion was about.
By Jove, to those ancient idiots dismay, they found out the next morning.
Well, every September 1st, the citizens of the People’s Republic of Cambridge have just about the same incredulous looks on their faces as they ready themselves for the “Invasion” of the Students.
(See Peterson’s Field Guide to Common Cambridge Types: Look under “students,” “Migratory species,” or “arrogant”.)
For a few months before that ominous date residents can actually find a parking space, can go to dinner without having to wait in incredibly long lines, and can generally go about their day-to-day business without being told of their natural inferiority (moral, intellectual, cultural) at almost every step of their way.
But as the August days start to grow shorter, the constellation Orion rises higher in the nighttime sky, and the politicians are scurrying about town looking for valid signatures, U-Haul trucks start to appear, as if out of nowhere, on the streets of the city.
At first, it’s a rare sighting, as when the first cormorants came back to the Charles River about 15 years ago. But as the days of Summer wan, the U-hauls become much more ubiquitous until there isn’t a street in Cambridge that is not clogged with their squatty boxturtle-like appearance. Needless to say, the students who rent these trucks, are completely clueless how to drive them, let alone navigate the serpentine Cambridge streets, originally laid out as cow paths.
No, even Ben Franklin and his infinite ingenuity could have envisioned a street clogged with horn-honking Harvard honkies doing U-turns in U-hauls on Mass Ave.
Long time residents, who think of this as “The Migration of the Loons”, avoid travel on the Mass Pike and other arteries of mass confusion. Traffic can be at a stand still from the Cambridge Exit going all the way back to its origin somewhere in the swamps of Secaucus, New Jersey.
This is a yearly occurrence and you can set your calendar by it much like the ancient peoples once marked the changing of the seasons by the flooding of the Nile, the coming of the monsoons in the Indian subcontinent, and the first Monday Night football game in Dallas, Texas.
THE INVASION, Part Duex
If September 1st brings about the invasion of the snobby, ultra-smart, little rich brats, then Street Cleaning Day brings out the invasion of the beer-guzzling, grease-covered, tattooed, low-life tow truck drivers.
(No offense intended).
To them, there isn’t an automobile in the whole of the paved-over Western World that isn’t towable. And they have every imaginable tool (legal & illegal) to break into your car in order to take it away.
In many ways these drivers might actually be descended from the previously Indeed, this is a very special Tuesday! A Tuesday that is almost diametrically opposed to the Goodwill and party atmosphere of Mardi Gras’ “Fat Tuesday” in New Orleans.
Sure there are half-naked women crowding the streets, but they are in bedclothes frantically trying to figure out, among other things: Where the hell did I paahk my caah? (Long time residents); What the hell is a caah, (Newly arrived New Yorkers); Who the hell has that bullhorn and what the hell did he say? (Everyone); What does that maniac mean by “tagged & towed”? (Newly arrived New Yorkers); and Where the hell am I going to paahk my Caaaah! (Everyone).
Most of the students who moved into the neighborhood the day before from various points of megalopolis are in a booze induced stupor since they were up all night blasting their boom boxes as they unloaded their belongings onto their neighbors front lawns. (So much for all the years of watching public television and Mr. Rogers!)
The last thing a newly arrived Harvard student would ever think to read was something as lowly as a street sign, so they parked where ever the spirit moved them.
The longtime residents know what “tagged and towed mean” so they scramble to move their cars, but find that their cars are boxed-in by the U-Hauls, DPW trucks, and the armada-on-wheels of tow trucks.
The tow truck driver’s eyes are lit up like electronic cash registers. It’s quite a sight, reminiscent of a never aired episode of The Twilight Zone where a whole town goes mad upon the arrival of an unexpected pizza delivery man.
If you’re lucky, you’ll find a parking space. If it’s in Cambridge that’s all the better. And no matter what you heard, most of the time you don’t have to travel all the way to New Hampshire. Although, when you go through this same thing on the next day, you certainly might consider moving there.
If you’re unlucky enough to find that your car already missing, you have to make your way to a place in Cambridge where the Sun never shines.
This place is accessible only by car, and since your car has just been tagged and towed, this is where the challenge begins.
It’s the type of mythic struggle that someone like Sisyphus would appreciate.
Of course, this lot is not located on a public transportation route. Remember this is New England where the puritan ethnic still reigns, and if it was easily accessible, then it wouldn’t be much of a penance for the sin of parking on the wrong side of the street! (Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa).
The lot is located somewhere between 6th & 7th Streets, or the 6th and 7th circles of Dante’s Hell. (Flip a coin.)
Once you find your way there, you have to make your way across a crater strewn lot that looks a lot like the dark side of the Moon. The place is littered with broken down jalopies dating back to the time of Henry Ford, if not Cotton Mather. At the far end of the yard you can gander something that looks vaguely like your Volvo.
But first you have to go to “The Trailer” to pay your bill. For your convenience, there is a pawn shop located right next to the trailer (in another even shabbier looking trailer) where you can hock just about anything except your first born. (They hate children.)
The guys in the trailer look like the barkers at Pinnocio’s Pleasure Island, except not as clean-cut or honest. You hand them over the “C” note and without a word (but maybe a belch) they hand you over the keys to your car.
In many ways I often think that if I wasn’t a football coach or High School Teacher, or now a credible city Council Candidate, maybe a tow truck driver would have been my calling.
Invasions are nothing new to “civilization”. The years 1066 and the invasion of the Normans (to England), 1938 and the invasion of the Nazis (into Poland), and 1966 and the invasion of the Japanese Tourists (to New York City) are three incursions that readily come to mind. Even our language is loaded with such terminology. Take football for instance: The purpose of the game is to invade the other teams territory (past the 50 yard line), gain as much “ground” as you can, conquering the area in 10 yard increments (first downs), until you bring the ball across the goal line and score (a touchdown). You can do this over and over again until you conquer your enemy (win the game). Usually your opponent puts up a good fight. But that isn’t always the case.
It has been said (or at least this is what I think I heard while snoozing in the teacher’s lounge) that the day before the Visogoths sacked and pillared Rome in 410 AD, that the people of this ancient city gazed upon the barbarian hordes, who were camped upon a high plateau above the city, with an almost childlike sense of astonishment wondering what all the commotion was about.
By Jove, to those ancient idiots dismay, they found out the next morning.
Well, every September 1st, the citizens of the People’s Republic of Cambridge have just about the same incredulous looks on their faces as they ready themselves for the “Invasion” of the Students.
(See Peterson’s Field Guide to Common Cambridge Types: Look under “students,” “Migratory species,” or “arrogant”.)
For a few months before that ominous date residents can actually find a parking space, can go to dinner without having to wait in incredibly long lines, and can generally go about their day-to-day business without being told of their natural inferiority (moral, intellectual, cultural) at almost every step of their way.
But as the August days start to grow shorter, the constellation Orion rises higher in the nighttime sky, and the politicians are scurrying about town looking for valid signatures, U-Haul trucks start to appear, as if out of nowhere, on the streets of the city.
At first, it’s a rare sighting, as when the first cormorants came back to the Charles River about 15 years ago. But as the days of Summer wan, the U-hauls become much more ubiquitous until there isn’t a street in Cambridge that is not clogged with their squatty boxturtle-like appearance. Needless to say, the students who rent these trucks, are completely clueless how to drive them, let alone navigate the serpentine Cambridge streets, originally laid out as cow paths.
No, even Ben Franklin and his infinite ingenuity could have envisioned a street clogged with horn-honking Harvard honkies doing U-turns in U-hauls on Mass Ave.
Long time residents, who think of this as “The Migration of the Loons”, avoid travel on the Mass Pike and other arteries of mass confusion. Traffic can be at a stand still from the Cambridge Exit going all the way back to its origin somewhere in the swamps of Secaucus, New Jersey.
This is a yearly occurrence and you can set your calendar by it much like the ancient peoples once marked the changing of the seasons by the flooding of the Nile, the coming of the monsoons in the Indian subcontinent, and the first Monday Night football game in Dallas, Texas.
THE INVASION, Part Duex
If September 1st brings about the invasion of the snobby, ultra-smart, little rich brats, then Street Cleaning Day brings out the invasion of the beer-guzzling, grease-covered, tattooed, low-life tow truck drivers.
(No offense intended).
To them, there isn’t an automobile in the whole of the paved-over Western World that isn’t towable. And they have every imaginable tool (legal & illegal) to break into your car in order to take it away.
In many ways these drivers might actually be descended from the previously Indeed, this is a very special Tuesday! A Tuesday that is almost diametrically opposed to the Goodwill and party atmosphere of Mardi Gras’ “Fat Tuesday” in New Orleans.
Sure there are half-naked women crowding the streets, but they are in bedclothes frantically trying to figure out, among other things: Where the hell did I paahk my caah? (Long time residents); What the hell is a caah, (Newly arrived New Yorkers); Who the hell has that bullhorn and what the hell did he say? (Everyone); What does that maniac mean by “tagged & towed”? (Newly arrived New Yorkers); and Where the hell am I going to paahk my Caaaah! (Everyone).
Most of the students who moved into the neighborhood the day before from various points of megalopolis are in a booze induced stupor since they were up all night blasting their boom boxes as they unloaded their belongings onto their neighbors front lawns. (So much for all the years of watching public television and Mr. Rogers!)
The last thing a newly arrived Harvard student would ever think to read was something as lowly as a street sign, so they parked where ever the spirit moved them.
The longtime residents know what “tagged and towed mean” so they scramble to move their cars, but find that their cars are boxed-in by the U-Hauls, DPW trucks, and the armada-on-wheels of tow trucks.
The tow truck driver’s eyes are lit up like electronic cash registers. It’s quite a sight, reminiscent of a never aired episode of The Twilight Zone where a whole town goes mad upon the arrival of an unexpected pizza delivery man.
If you’re lucky, you’ll find a parking space. If it’s in Cambridge that’s all the better. And no matter what you heard, most of the time you don’t have to travel all the way to New Hampshire. Although, when you go through this same thing on the next day, you certainly might consider moving there.
If you’re unlucky enough to find that your car already missing, you have to make your way to a place in Cambridge where the Sun never shines.
This place is accessible only by car, and since your car has just been tagged and towed, this is where the challenge begins.
It’s the type of mythic struggle that someone like Sisyphus would appreciate.
Of course, this lot is not located on a public transportation route. Remember this is New England where the puritan ethnic still reigns, and if it was easily accessible, then it wouldn’t be much of a penance for the sin of parking on the wrong side of the street! (Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa).
The lot is located somewhere between 6th & 7th Streets, or the 6th and 7th circles of Dante’s Hell. (Flip a coin.)
Once you find your way there, you have to make your way across a crater strewn lot that looks a lot like the dark side of the Moon. The place is littered with broken down jalopies dating back to the time of Henry Ford, if not Cotton Mather. At the far end of the yard you can gander something that looks vaguely like your Volvo.
But first you have to go to “The Trailer” to pay your bill. For your convenience, there is a pawn shop located right next to the trailer (in another even shabbier looking trailer) where you can hock just about anything except your first born. (They hate children.)
The guys in the trailer look like the barkers at Pinnocio’s Pleasure Island, except not as clean-cut or honest. You hand them over the “C” note and without a word (but maybe a belch) they hand you over the keys to your car.
In many ways I often think that if I wasn’t a football coach or High School Teacher, or now a credible city Council Candidate, maybe a tow truck driver would have been my calling.
