Yesterday I took a mid-evening jog on the Minuteman Bikeway, a 10-mile paved path that transverses the center of my town and provides not only recreation but genuine transportation for thousands of cyclists, walkers, joggers, and rollerbladers, many of whom (including myself) use the path to access the Boston subway at Alewife station.
Of course, I enjoy the path more when I’m not using it to commute to work. I enjoy it in the morning, when it is quiet except for the hurried exerciser, the early-bird commuter, and the gaunt old man who drops torn pieces of bread onto the path for swarms of sparrows to devour. I enjoy it in the afternoon, when elderly residents and mothers with baby carriages use the path to access adjacent supermarkets and pharmacies. I enjoy it in the evening, when gangs of white-collar cyclists don tight jerseys and spandex and zoom past pokie exercisers, straggling commuters, couples heading to the town center for dinner, and — my hero — the old lady who walkes with a metal wheeled walker affixed with a large stereo radio that blasts talk radio (I call it the “iPed.”)
After I do 5 miles on the path, I head for home, jogging past the large parking lot in the town center. In the summers, on Wednesdays, from 1pm until 6:30pm, there is a farmer’s market. I have only been to this particular farmer’s market once. It features typical farm vegetables, scrubbed and trimmed to resemble supermarket produce and placed alongside high profit-margin, desirable yuppie commodities like goat cheese, olive oil, and baked goods. I found it inferior to the farmer’s market that I frequent in Cambridge at my former co-op, where you can find 5 different varietals of bok choy, hydroponic herbs, and more strains of tomato than most markets have of apples.
But whatever, that’s Cambridge. This is the next town over, geographically closer to the farms but philosophically light years away. Farmer’s markets are still new and exciting to many residents, even if they only buy corn and strawberries because they have no clue how to cook swiss chard.
The time is approaching 6:30pm, and the farmer’s market is still packed with shoppers rushing to make purchases as the workers load up their trucks. Suddenly, I find myself blocked by an immense black SUV that is parked on the sidewalk at one of the parking lot’s entrances/exits. The unoccupied SUV is facing the parking lot, as if someone pulled into the parking lot, stopped the minute they were off of the road, and hopped out. I cannot get around the SUV in either direction — in the front, some unwitting cars are blocked from exiting the parking lot, and in the back, there’s the speeding rush-hour traffic coming off of Mass Ave.
I stand there, wondering why, why someone would leave their SUV on the sidewalk. Then a casually-dressed woman in her 50s walks to the driver’s side, carrying a pint of strawberries. She waves at the cars trying to leave the parking lot with a dutifully sheepish grin. She starts up her tank and backs up into oncoming traffic, causes a chorus of horn-honking that nearly blows out my ear drums, then takes off down the road. I wish I had asked her what the hell she was doing, but I knew: Her titanic motor vehicle was simply too massive to drive in the cramped, busy parking lot, but she really wanted some farm-fresh strawberries. There’s a metaphor there, for sure.
