Wednesday, August 23, 2000

By BILLY MURPHY
Laugh Lines

A little rhyme to begin with:

Here I am stuck inside,
Sitting in traffic just biding my time
I feel myself go cross-eyed,
Getting high off carbon monoxide.
The guy to my left is making me mad,
The girl to my right is making me sad;
The lady behind me is robbing my joy,
The guy in front of me, I’d like to destroy.
Lost my religion in a traffic jam.
Now the girl to my left is fixin’ her mirror,
But that doesn’t help her see any clearer.
She’s weaving and swerving, it’s making me crack up; The problem is, she’s doing her makeup.
The guy to my left is making me mad,
The girl to my right is making me sad.
The lady behind me is robbing my joy,
The guy in front of me, I’d like to destroy.
Lost my religion in a traffic jam.

I used to brag how we had no traffic in Peachtree City. It doesn’t pay to brag. I don’t brag anymore.

All that has come crashing down as this part of Fayette County can officially be called, “congested.”

Though we have come to expect it, it is still astounding how so many people could be driving around at the same time. From an aerial view, we must look like a metallic ant farm, one vehicle persistently following another, only hoping to pass, overtake or push to the side.

Not only does every family in Peachtree City have 2.3 cars now, but it seems like every person in every home is on the road every minute of the day. It’s been especially bad recently when heat and drought has reached record levels and pollution hangs in the air like some old lady’s bad perfume.

We can officially count Peachtree City among the “filled” cities of Atlanta. No more room to drive, no more room to eat, no more room to breath. You can’t get in and out of the post office anymore. You can’t find a parking spot at Kroger, K-Mart or Publix. Even Chic-Fil-A, the fastest fast-food window in the world, has lines that circle the building like vultures over the Serengeti.

I lived up in Gwinnett county for many years and I thought I would never, ever have to see that kind of congestion again, but it’s here. You never got through a traffic light the first time it was green and you never turned left out of a parking lot. It was crowded. I used to do my grocery shopping after midnight because the Kroger there was so was also so jammed.

Therein, I think, lies the answer to your problems. We need to go to a town being on shifts. Let’s divide the town into three groups, and each group can only drive around during their “shift.” The we could have virtually three cities going on during one 24-hour day but only be one-third the size. Because we are already three times too large.

Something for our city government to think about. But, whatever happens, they can take their time deciding, ’cause we’ll all be right here, waiting in traffic.

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