Take a Detroit Left at the Light

Home again, home again, jiggity-jig. After a week of restless nights in a hotel, I slept in my own bed last night. I was in bed by 10 and slept through till 6. I only woke up because some fool didn’t turn off the alarm. That fool would be me. I distinctly remember moving the switch on the alarm, but I must have been dreaming. To be quite truthful, I was in bed by 10, but fell asleep about 9.

It was a business trip. Not a “fun” trip, but we managed to have fun whenever we could. Through the years I have found the best way to tolerate, and even enjoy, anything associated with work is to make it as fun as possible. Often this means poking fun at the thing that is the most exasperating.

During our forays through the city, we all developed something in common – a deep and abiding disrespect for the Street Committee. There’s probably no such group, but it’s not hard to believe that a committee was responsible for the idiosyncrasies of the streets in that city.

It was our daily team-building activity to ridicule the streets and traffic system, identifying new annoyances and mocking yesterday's finds. For some reason the Street Committee had decreed that you should turn right to go left. U turns were not just legal, but encouraged (not that any of the guys needed that much encouragement.) Sometimes the left turn signal was a flashing red light. Not a yellow light meaning Yield! But a red light that in every normal community means Stop!

Cross streets were named one thing on one side of the street and something else on the other. Building numbers were odd on one side of the street and even on the other, but would sometimes switch sides for no apparent reason. Streets signs for North Wayne Street and South Wayne Street only said Wayne Street. Street signs were often hard to find and harder to read. It’s not that most streets didn’t have street signs, they were just hidden and too small to read without binoculars. One street became an interstate highway for just a few miles before becoming a street again. There were dirt roads near downtown. A lot of roads needed repaving. And on and on.

Well, I’m home again.

Home again, home again, jiggity-jig. My father used to say that when we got home after a trip. It's just one of those silly, half embarrassing, half endearing things that all fathers say to their children. One of those things that make you roll your eyes when you're a teenager. One of those things that you remember when you’re older and wish you could hear just one more time, but know you’ll never hear again, not from the same voice.

My father wouldn’t have liked that city. He didn’t believe in u-turns. He taught me to never turn around, to always keep going in the right direction. Sooner or later you’ll get where you’re going, he’d say. Just enjoy the ride and watch the scenery along the way.

Home again, home again, jiggity-jog.