Saturday, July 24, 2010
Steambath weather
Friday was Sonogram Day at the primary doctor's office in Roselle, about two miles away. She brings in a guy with a portable ultrasound unit & schedules a bunch of her patients. Small suitcase size, in the darkened room with the keyboard lit up it looks like a laptop computer as imagined by Popular Science magazine in the 1950's. I arrived there 1/2 hour early, good because someone had canceled. The assistant said she had just tried to reach me, got my voice mail, then tried the other contact number, also no answer. "You mean the nearest relative contact?" Yes. "That's my sister's home number. She's probably at work. I'll give you her cellphone number, & mine. But don't call her about a routine matter like rescheduling an appointment, she might misunderstand you. She's a calm person, but she shifts gears real fast."
I was finished about 1, went down the block to a CVS, filled a prescription & got a few things. Choice then of buses, one to downtown Elmora where I could do some other errands & walk home or call a taxi from there, or another to a corner about three blocks from my apt. But the air was muggy hot, the overcast sky dropping a few blobs of rain, it wasn't a promising time to be out & about. So I walked a long block, crossed a bridge over an abandoned railroad line, & into Roselle Park to catch the #58 on Westfield Ave., due about ten minutes after I planted myself at the bus stop. Had my umbrella, but it just plopped big raindrops, no downpour. Steambath afternoon in Jersey.
There I was, at the edge of my hometown. I could see downtown a block away. I grew up about three blocks from where I was standing. If you stay in your hometown - & many from Roselle Park do, it's a rather insular place - it may change so slowly that you hardly notice. Park is that kind of town. But I've rarely had reason to go back there. So just the fact that the stores I could see were different, & a few buildings replaced, & houses renovated, gave me a weird, not very pleasant feeling, & I was glad the bus came on time.
I've resided in the vicinity of Roselle Park for decades, but none of the other towns in Union County give me that feeling.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
I was finished about 1, went down the block to a CVS, filled a prescription & got a few things. Choice then of buses, one to downtown Elmora where I could do some other errands & walk home or call a taxi from there, or another to a corner about three blocks from my apt. But the air was muggy hot, the overcast sky dropping a few blobs of rain, it wasn't a promising time to be out & about. So I walked a long block, crossed a bridge over an abandoned railroad line, & into Roselle Park to catch the #58 on Westfield Ave., due about ten minutes after I planted myself at the bus stop. Had my umbrella, but it just plopped big raindrops, no downpour. Steambath afternoon in Jersey.
There I was, at the edge of my hometown. I could see downtown a block away. I grew up about three blocks from where I was standing. If you stay in your hometown - & many from Roselle Park do, it's a rather insular place - it may change so slowly that you hardly notice. Park is that kind of town. But I've rarely had reason to go back there. So just the fact that the stores I could see were different, & a few buildings replaced, & houses renovated, gave me a weird, not very pleasant feeling, & I was glad the bus came on time.
I've resided in the vicinity of Roselle Park for decades, but none of the other towns in Union County give me that feeling.
Labels: growing up, weather
