Freeways..What The

My daughter, Lauren, who lives in Northern California reminds me there is no the before our shared freeways. Down here we have The 405, The 101 and The 5 etc... Somewhere en route those major highways lose their, The. Maybe it happens in the wine country of San Luis Obispo so that by the time it reaches San Jose they are too inebriated for The. What I call The Silicon Valley, she calls Silicon Valley. And to think, my daughters were raised in The San Fernando Valley.

What would The Vatican and The Bronx be without them. Certain words demand the article as do THE Museum of Modern Art and THE Metropolitan Opera or just The Met. As I recall the main street in The Bronx was The Grand Concourse just like The Grand Canal in Venice.

Then there’s The French Quarter, The Renaissance and The Roaring Twenties. It would be unthinkable to leave out the The. Imagine if Hamlet had said, To be or not to be. That is questionable. I rest my case.

I have a request to write about the 5 freeway. I might tell about the dog I rescued that wandered out between cars or the time I got a ticket for going too slow because my mother was in the back seat yelling that I was going too fast. However the first never happened and the second occurred on the 10 freeway…which must be twice as good as the 5.

As freeways go, the 5 is one of the few single digit ones I have known. The number 1 wins the prize for being so scenic one can die happily driving over the cliff. The 2 is stuck in Glendale and the 5 is notable for being the shortest but dullest route to the Bay area. It is so boring one has to plan ahead with loud music and a bottomless thermos of  coffee.

In fact I can’t recall ever driving on the 5 unless it was that time I made a wrong turn and ended up in Bakersfield. That might be the way Bakersfield was settled; by folks with no sense of direction.

Why do they post signs on freeways announcing distant destinations? Is that the work of visionaries intended for people who want to get as far away from here as possible? San Diego? Sacramento? I expect one to direct me to Patagonia or the polar ice cap.

If I lived in Lancaster or Palmdale, God forbid, it might be my favorite freeway, too, but I’m willing to live out my remaining decades without calling the Antelope Valley my home. The 5 freeway receives most attention for the stretch known as the Grapevine as in I heard it through the…. It becomes a headline in the holiday season when thousands of travelers are stuck there for 48 hours due to black ice and fog. Seems like a good location for a soup kitchen.

A friend told me she and her husband found themselves on it during a sand-storm, getting off just before a multi-car pile-up. They pulled into a Mobil Station where she wanted to use the restroom. Upon leaving the car the wind started to carry her off. She wrapped herself around a gas pump till her husband rescued her. There is no more ignominious way to die than clinging to a high octane pump.

I expect we all have a love/hate relationship with the freeway that gets us to and fro. I’m thankful I don’t need the 710 or 605 which specialize in jack-knifed big rigs.

My favorite is the Marina Freeway on a Sunday morning or any other time. It has only two exits and I could put up with anything for that long.