Warhol morning

I am stuck behind a Ford Focus that is stuck behind someone else that is stuck behind someone else ...

The Focus is splattered with bumper stickers that are too small to read without risking a wreck, but the vanity plate intrigues ...

Warhol.

I presume the intention is to honor Warhol, Andy. The artist.

That someone would go to the expense and time-consumption of acquiring a plate to celebrate Andy, sets my thoughts a-spinning. I try to glimpse the driver, a man probably a few years older than me. Probably would be very interesting to sit down and chat with in a coffee house.

We are between cities and I wonder if he is traveling to mine. But my natural impatience eventually overcomes my curiosity and I shift lanes and leave him behind.

"Whammer Jammer" by J. Geils Band is playing on the radio. Great start-of-a-summer road trip kind of song. I thrash around appropriately in my car. But sadly, I am going to work, not play.

I think about that old country song, something to the effect that every day, a man pulls up to a certain stoplight in town and must make a decision: right means home to the Wife, kids, mortgage; left leads to the open road.

In the corner of my eye I glimpse a bearded guy sitting on a box by the side of the freeway, playing a guitar. Surreal. But since I am now going 81 mph in the left lane, I have deprived myself of the chance for a closer look, I am half a mile beyond him before my brain clicks into gear. Oh well. Surely in my life I will again see a bearded guy sitting on a box by the side of a freeway playing guitar and next time I will be going slow enough to pull to a stop and have a chat.

Billy Idol is screaming "White Wedding" on the radio. Against my will and the mood of the music, I slow down. Don't care to give a traffic cop a score for the morning.

I pull into the dismal parking lot of my place of employment just as Pink Floyd begins "Us and Them." I consider sitting there and grooving to the whole song and being rather late. I shut off the music and begin another day.

I will make the right turn at the stoplight tonight.