It’s a Road Construction Festival!

In a nation where, by every issue you can name, there are few - VERY few - issues that unite us. Maybe our coast-to-coast devotion to team sports? Beyoncé’s country music album? Our addiction to cell phones, tablets, and streaming devices? (Giving new meaning, by the way, to the age-old adage: “left to our own devices….”)

Where I live - Long Beach Island, New Jersey - we have our own constant, daily, unifying phenomenon. It’s ongoing since I-don’t-know-when, and if pressed, even those in charge cannot give you a date for its completion.

Road construction.

It’s always there. It greets us as we arrive on Long Beach Island and bids us goodbye as we leave, making it easy to be skeptical and critical and complain.

But this is New Jersey. That’s what we do. Especially if something is bothersome and frustrating and has been going on for years. We know it. We acknowledge it. We live it.

We have opinions.

Perception is reality. And the reality is road construction is difficult, complex, and time-consuming. I’m on an island, and that presents a myriad of unique problems, constrictions, and obstacles not found on the mainland.

Honestly, I don’t want to know the cost in time and/or money. I am taking for granted the end is not in sight. Who hasn’t been in a traffic jam and said words to the effect of, “Gee whillikers this has taken a long time!?”

So?

We need another point-of-view. We need a new outlook!

Make it a celebration. An ongoing party. And guess what? You’re invited, no matter where you are, because it is a part of daily life in these United States.

A FESTIVAL OF ROAD CONSTRUCTION! The lights! The uniforms! The traffic cones!

I’m not sure which lights are more fun.

The retina-burning, bright-as-the-sun, military-strength white heat/white light beams that come on after sunset and sometimes offer extra light to places far away as Europe?

Or the little flashing yellow bulbs that wink and blink as we drive by. In my world those yellow lights have a welcome allure, a certain je ne sais quois that outsiders cannot possibly understand.

For context, let me put this in real world terms: there are 47 (FORTY-SEVEN!) stoplights between the bridge that crosses to Long Beach Island, and my house in Beach Haven. On average, during the summer, I will make 10 full stops at traffic lights as I drive the 7.1 miles to-and-from.

So, I love you yellow lights. Flash on. Blink your unspoken-yet-universally-understood-and-oh-so-friendly advice to “be careful,” “drive safely,” and, as Mr. Rogers would have it (who had a yellow blinking light in the opening credits of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, “relax and take the time to slow down.”

For those who attended all-night “raves” back in the 1980s and 90s, where everything - the lights, the sound, the colors - was LOUD. GARISH. OVER-THE-TOP. Not to mention an affront to the senses, you get it, don’t you?

Don’t you see? What’s the difference between an all-night rave from 1998 and the all-night RCF (Road Construction Festival) that takes place with road construction nowadays? It’s loud. It’s garish (how many shades of yellow are there?). And, it’s definitively over the top!

Those raves used yellow and neon green colors as fashion statements. What is the difference between the reflective yellow pullover jerseys (fashionistas anyone?) and the oh-so-hip glowsticks that were de rigeur at the all-night dance parties some 30 years ago?

I’ll admit it: I am transfixed by the costuming of today’s road construction worker. The hard hat (sometimes white, sometimes not, always cutting-edge), the lace-up boots (preferably mud-caked), the work jeans and belts and accoutrements.

(What is a jackhammer but a stylish addition to the contemporary “look” these hard-working people have embraced? There is a word, in the world of fashion, that defines the genre. That word is “layer.” And what is a jackhammer in the able hands of a road construction professional but a defining extra layer that says, “Yeah. I have a jackhammer. I am holding it right now, and prepare to be amazed because I know how to use it!” Many a time when my wife, Marsia, and I pass them on the road together, I have seen her swoon.)

NOTE: just so we are being honest… road construction work is high-risk. Especially on major highways. Fact.

Still! This ain’t nothin’ but a party! And what is a party without decorations? And boy, do we have ‘em! I’m talking about the traffic cones that designate work areas. Those orange traffic cones look like the hats for witches, as if Stevie Nicks had gone psychedelic and cloned herself, then had construction workers bury her doppelgängers in the road, ready to rise from the tar and blacktop like a Michael Jackson “Thriller” video (redux) when some unwitting driver blasts “Edge of Seventeen” from the speakers of her Tesla.

Finally, throw in the bulldozers, excavators, tractors, and diggers. Giant, prehistoric machines that move in a slow-motion ballet. It’s a Cirque du Soleil of road construction which we get to watch in exquisite detail while we inch forward in traffic, oblivious to the divine spectacle unfolding before us, naively asking ourselves: “How much longer is this going to take?”



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Thanks for reading,
Taylor