When finishing up my
doctoral studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, I
was going to school in mid-town Manhattan, but living in the southern part of
Brooklyn. This required that I commute
daily back and forth by subway.
The trip took about an hour
and half in each direction and obliged me to stand most of the way, sandwiched
in between other standing commuters.
There was no possibility of reading a book, given the constant jostling
and noise. The only option was to grin
and bear it, while hanging on to a subway strap.
As a native New Yorker, I had grown accustomed
to this form of torture. It seemed
normal and inescapable. But then something
happened that changed my perspective. I
experienced a commute that was so horrendous it made me reevaluate everything I
believed.
This time when I entered the
subway car in Manhattan, I found a young man standing at the end of the coach
with a huge radio on his shoulder. He
seemed to be playing it as loud as he could, but no one approached him to ask
that he lower the volume because it looked as if he might turn violent.
At this point, I concluded
that this was New York and hence discomfort came with the territory. But then, about three stations later, another
young man, with an even bigger radio, boarded our car. He soon began playing dueling radios with the
first fellow, apparently to see whose boom box was the most powerful.
For the next forty-five
minutes or so, I stood there muttering to myself that there had to be a better
way to live. It was at this moment that
I resolved to leave New York. Not long
thereafter I did and have never regretted my choice.
Today I live in Cherokee County,
but commute to my job as a professor in Cobb County. The automobile ride from Canton to Kennesaw State
University takes about thirty-five minutes.
Of course, when I resided in Cobb, the trip took only about twenty
minutes.
The bottom line is that it
now takes me about fifteen minutes longer to get to work than it did
before. Most of this journey is on
I-575, with this being the quickest part of the journey. Sometimes I ride with my wife—who is also a
professor at KSU—yet most of the time, because our schedules differ, I am
alone.
As other residents of
Cherokee will know, this trip has recently been made more difficult by
construction along the highway. An
express lane is being added, so in the meantime barricades have restricted the roadway’s
width, thereby slowing things down and making it more uncomfortable to
navigate.
Still, I am not
complaining. I have a standard of
comparison. Whenever traffic is reduced
to a crawl, I remember the New York subway.
Back then, I was standing, but now am sitting. Back then, I was forced to hear the most
obnoxious heavy-metal, whereas today Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven soothe my
jangled nerves.
Moreover, Georgia drivers
are so polite. Oh yes, there is the
occasional fool who drives too fast and cuts in when he shouldn’t. By and large, however, people are
courteous. They allow their fellow
motorists to change lanes and wait patiently in line at the stoplights that
regulate access to the highway.
Did I mention that I was
once a cab driver in New York? Well, I
was. And so I know, from bitter
experience, what cutthroat, bumper derby traffic is like. I have also spent hours on the roads of south
Florida, so I am also aware of what vehicular craziness looks like.
Commuting here in north
Georgia is, by comparison, a walk in the park.
Traffic is never fun, but I get to rehearse my day before entering the
classroom in the morning and to decompress in the afternoon after struggling
with students during the intervening hours.
How bad is that? I count myself lucky and therefore sanguinely
tolerate the construction stops. They
are worth the price.
Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University
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