Unbagging the Cats 1

Unbagging the Cats 1

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Backroads Miz Manners

It has come to my attention, gentle drivers, that you are not well-versed in the etiquette of navigating rural two-lane blacktop. Perhaps a refresher course is in order.

When driving a dump truck, behind which is attached a flatbed trailer loaded with a yellow backhoe, it behooves one to utilize the right-hand road lane at all times, especially when cresting a hill.

Citizens who reside on gravel roads feeding into the two-lane blacktop are not in need of one's charitable donations of cardboard beer cases, fast-food bags and cups, kitten litters, portable methamphetamine labs, truckloads of trimmed branches, non-working refrigerators, full garbage bags, forlorn canines, used disposable diapers, and metal frames of incinerated recliners.

A divided highway is best utilized when one's goal is to travel swiftly to one's destination. Alongside many a divided highway run two-lane blacktop roads, which are routinely traveled by those who live off said two-lane blacktop. It does not bode well for a motorist with an ETA agenda to meander along the two-lane blacktop when a divided highway is provided. No matter how proud one is of one's ability to drive 45 mph while maintaining a distance of three inches between one's front bumper and the rear bumper of the car one is following, such an exhibition of skill is, at best, unflattering. One will find that this tactic does not engender one's fellow drivers to alter their speed in the way of increasing mph.

Next week: The Feeding and Eating of Dust.

3 comments:

Author Joshua Hoyt said...

I hate it when people try to push me by getting as close as they can. In fact I find that I slow down when this happens just to annoy them. Although I must confess that I have been that annoying driver at times, but I have changed my ways in my older years :)

Linda O'Connell said...

Sounds like you have a had a bad experience recently :)I hate being tailgated. Last week I saw a drunk driver swaying IN HIS SEAT as well as from lane to lane!

Val said...

Josh,
I really teach them a lesson when I slow down to the actual speed limit.
_________________________

Linda,
What's this RECENTLY all about? No matter what time of day or what road or how fast I'm going over the speed limit, some yahoo wants to go faster.

I don't know how you drive in the city. I used to commute to the South St. Louis unemployment office on Morganford, by the Bevo Mill, until we moved the office to South Broadway. It didn't bother me then, but I couldn't drive up there now. Too many folks are crazy and irresponsible drivers. The fewer of them I'm exposed to, the better.