By Jim Hagarty
1993
Day after day, down my street, they fly. Cars, trucks and motorcycles heading for the east end of the city, the shopping malls and the fast-food restaurants. Their drivers in a big, big hurry. In such a big hurry they have to use my street as a bypass for the busy main street. When time is that great an enemy for you, you have to make use of every advantage you can get to beat it. The only time in years gone by when vehicles would be driven that fast in residential areas was when volunteer firefighters were heading to the firehall, or doctors were making an emergency house call but now, panic-level driving, at least where I live, is becoming an everyday occurrence. Gotta get that package of woodscrews or that light bulb or that box of fries RIGHT NOW! It’s as if life itself has become one big emergency and we’re all on the way to the scene.
On and on they speed, down a street lined with homes where young children and old folks live and where pet cats, dogs and other animals try to cross from one side to the other unharmed. One day last week, on my way to work, I drove past a poor rabbit which had lost a fight with one such vehicle and was sprawled dead on the pavement.
In the summer, the freeway running by my door is at its most aggravating as I spend a lot of time outside working on the yards. Sometimes I yell at the drivers as they pass, even shake my fist in the air. “Slow down, ya creep,” I have been known to shout, but they never do, though I fully expect some big lunk one day to back up, get out of his car and discuss with me the finer points of motor-vehicle safety.
And so the parade of speeding sports cars, pick-up trucks and motorbikes, some of them with blaring stereos and faulty mufflers, goes on, their drivers oblivious to the danger, the noise pollution and the upset they’re causing.
Tuesday afternoon, during a short-lived sudden heat wave, I spent an hour soaking up the sun and sweeping up the winter dirt from my driveway. The odd car sped by like Batman to the rescue but things were relatively peaceful.
And then I heard it. A steady “clop, clop, clop, clop, clop, clop, clop, clop,” an unfamiliar sound, to say the least, on my street. Looking up, I saw what could have been a mirage. If it had disappeared as fast as it appeared, I wouldn’t have been surprised.
Two big, happy horses hauling a white milk wagon were making their way along and I stopped to watch as they passed. The driver in the motorless Avon Dairies van smiled, waved and called “hello” as he manoeuvred his team along. I stood, leaning on my broom, watching the old-fashioned rig and feeling more than a little nostalgic for a time when speed was not such a highly valued prize in our society.
If they’re going this quickly now, how fast will drivers be moving down my street a hundred years from now?
Will the people who live at my place then look back on these days and tell their kids, “I remember when cars used to go past here at only 80 kilometres an hour.”?
Actually, you know, it occurs to me that there were some things about the good old days that really were good.
Like horses.
And the time to enjoy them.
(Bob Marran has revived his father’s doorstep milk-delivery business in Stratford, Ontario, Canada, using horse-drawn carts to bring the product to his customers. Avon Dairies used the same method from 1930 to 1967.)
