Thursday, April 8

Porched.  It’s an ironic term used in the insurance industry.  It happens when you have an appointment to meet sales prospects, you arrive at their house and know they’re home (you can hear the TV, for example), but they don’t answer the door or the phone.  You’re left standing on the porch like a moron.  Why do I bring this up?  Well, I had a sales call at 7 pm in the Bronx, and … you can figure out the rest.  Technically speaking I wasn’t “porched,” only because ghetto tenements don’t have porches.  But saying that I was “decrepit dirty hallwayed” doesn’t sound as succinct.  Actually, given the decrepitude of the neighborhood (no one will ever call it Beverley Hills East) and the apartment building, I can’t imagine how they could have afforded any insurance.

Still, my porching wasn’t as bad as it could have been, as the drive was eaiser than I would have expected.  I left my workplace around 5 pm, and while eastbound traffic on the Expressway was fearsome it moved reasonably well in the westbound direction that I was heading.  There looked to be quite a backup at the exit to the Cross Island Parkway, my usual route to the Throgs Neck Bridge, so I continued on a couple of miles and took the Clearview Expressway to the bridge.  If I’ve ever gone that route before it was years ago, and it was a fairly pleasant surprise, traffic being light even though it was in the heart of rush hour.  The backup at the bridge’s toll booths  was about five minutes, and the rest of the route via the Bruckner Expressway (another route I’ve very seldom driven) was busier but tolerable.  Now, the surface streets in the area of the sales call, they were a very different story.  Most of them were last paved about when the Ford Model T was new on the market.  Driving across the craters of the Moon is a less bone-jarring experience.  I was very happy that my Subaru can take a beating, it was surely put to the test. The return journey, after I finally threw in the towel on the appointment, was no trouble at all, with traffic moving freely.