Driving in to work, circa 1991

We often think that being stuck in traffic is a modern invention, that our ancestors enjoyed empty freeways and limitless bursts of speed toward the horizon. Nothing could be further from the truth, as the follow first-hand account can attest. Bear in mind that this was an age when traffic was not constrained by any regulations: with no rules about which lane of the highway to drive on; no road-rage shootings to keep tawdry Fitipaldis in line; and worse yet - no dashboard cams to record the ensuing chaos, commuting was a simpler, more brutal affair.

found written on parchment in the glovebox of a latter-century Buick Century heading for the crusher, considered an entry in a mileage diary:

"The Buick Century was a light mid-sizer, as car reviewers term a vehicle that stands high upon the road and seats five, having discharged my children at daycare, from which place I was proceeding in ballast to work downtown in the city, there to call for orders. My run to within a few blocks of the local Starbucks had been extremely pleasant; the proverbial mildness of the late October morning was in the mellow sweetness of the wind and in the gentle undulations of the silver-laced swell of merging traffic; but scarce had I passed the distance of four miles when the traffic grew sullen and heavy, a dark bank of local buses of a livid hue rose in the north-west, and the ride-sharing came and went in small compacts, the delivery trucks venting themselves in dreary belches of airbrakes, insomuch that my old hands confessed they had never heard blasts more portentous.

I turned the cruise control off and slumped in my seat, but had instantly to sit up again, my legs being terribly cramped. A drink of spirits helped me; my blood presently flowed with briskness.

The city was in the west; she hung large, red, and distorted, and shed no light save her reflection that waved on the hoods and roofs of the traffic under her like several lengths of undulating red-hot wire. My haven was still very tranquil—the left lane lay calm; but there was a deeper tone in the booming sound of the distant vehicles, and a more menacing note in the echoing of the blows of the swell along this side of the North-South split, whence I concluded that, despite the fairness of the weather, the heave of the deep had, whilst I cruised, gathered a greater weight, which might signify stop-and-go not very many leagues away."