My Planet: Finding Humor in the Oddest Places

Taking Its Toll

The highway toll station as a method of tax collection dates to medieval times, long before the existence of postal trucks and other handy means of delivering tax bills to citizens without wasting an hour of their lives every day. Our local bridge district, perhaps staffed by medievalists or those nostalgic for simpler, more irritating times, continues to use a toll plaza.

“Good morrow, sir!” Ed salutes the tax collector as we pass through the gate each morning. His greeting is drowned out by a radio in the booth, or possibly a hurdy-gurdy player in doublet and pantaloons.

To convince commuters they are progress-minded fellows, our bridge district recently installed FasTrak, a system that deducts the toll automatically from your account as you pass. To use it, you send away for a “transponder,” which has a promising “Star Trek” ring to it, as if you have only to flip the thing open, press some buttons, and you and your car will vanish, then reappear on the far side of the traffic, wearing form-fitting V-neck uniforms.

In fact, it’s just a small, flat beeping plastic box that you put on your dashboard. Some people choose to Velcro the device to their windshield, as a convenience to thieves who can now break your car window, confident that their transgression will, at the very least, produce 20 bucks in bridge tolls.

While FasTrak apparently lives up to its name elsewhere in the nation, our version is not quite there. On our maiden run, traffic was backed up a mile from the toll plaza, the cars all honking and the knights overheating on their caparisoned chargers. Alas, the FasTrak-only lanes begin about 500 yards back from the tollgate, meaning that you can cut, oh, about 35 seconds off your commute. Ed tuned the radio to the 24-hour traffic station. As it was too late to take an alternative route, there was no point in doing this. I didn’t say anything, because the day before, Ed had refrained from saying anything when I tried to run my library card through an ATM slot. We do this for each other.

Ed leaned in to the radio speaker, concentrating. “Yup,” he said. “Traffic’s backed up all along here.”

At long last, we neared the FasTrak-only lane. I rummaged in the glove box for the transponder. Ed gave me a queer look, for I had grabbed our Travel Etch A Sketch and set it on the dash. The transponder was in the other car. As it turned out, it didn’t much matter. With just two FasTrak-only lanes, both were so clogged that it was actually faster to use a cash lane. To pass the time, I called directory assistance and tracked down the local administrator of the FasTrak program. She had ruined my morning, and now I was going to ruin hers.

I asked why there are only two FasTrak-only lanes. And why so short? She said they weren’t sure they had the “political stomach for the outcry” from the cash payers that would ensue if more, or longer, FasTrak-only lanes opened up. I gave her some outcry to practice on. Fie upon the cash payers! The goal should be to make these people’s commute so miserable that they are forced to get with the program.

“Well,” she said. “It’s certainly a tough decision. We try to strike a balance and move forward.”

“Me too,” I said. “I try to move forward too. Oops! Look at that. I can’t. Traffic’s at a standstill.” I hung up the phone.

“Why the hatred?” said Ed. “It’s just life.” If only I could be like Ed. I decided that from here on out, I would go forward—or maybe just sideways—with acceptance and calm and forgiveness.

As we got to the tollbooth, I smiled and handed the collector an extra dollar. A little something for the hurdy-gurdy man.