The trouble with time travel – I have always argued, is that if we could actually travel through time, time wouldn’t be time, anymore.
I mean, time is predictable, inexorable (look it up), unyielding, and monotonous (not to mention, redundant): if it were not all those things, it would not be time.
Understand?
The same might be said for traffic (in fact, I just said it) – and historically, efforts to manage traffic have been as pathetic as the efforts to manage time. That is to say, the idea that we can manage traffic is, largely, science fiction – that is, except for the exploits our own Billington Brothers.
The Billington Brothers, in case you’re new to town – were Plymouth’s own time travelers. No, I’m sorry – I meant to say, Plymouth’s own traffic engineers. In fact, you might say that the Billington Brothers were America’s first traffic engineers.
Way back before there was traffic in America (a long, long time ago), the Billington Brothers were managing it.
Before there was a need to find a quick way to Middleboro – before Old 44 and way before the New 44, and actually before Middleboro itself, Francis Billington went looking for a short cut.
He actually found it – the short cut that is, but as there was no where to cut shortly to – save for the 3000 or so miles between here and the Pacific Ocean, Francis might still be headed west if he did not run smack dab into a Native American all-natural rotary. Some historians have cynically concluded that Francis was actually lost, but I think we have all seen our share of out-of-state drivers who knew right where they were, but could not extricate themselves from a rotary.
I could go on – making a kind of literary rotary out of this, but unlike those aforementioned drivers, I know that to get out of this. I simply need to use, what my first English teacher told me, was a transitional device.
300 years after Francis Billington got caught in that magic circle of bent birch trees, his descendant, Tiki Manoogian, is one of the regulars at the very popular collection of shops and automobile service operations on South Street, known as the Mayflower Convenience Store.
Actually, until I told him, Tiki didn’t even realize that his favorite store sits on the site of that prehistoric rotary.
Until I convinced him, Tiki didn’t even know that he was a descendant of Francis Billington.
But after experiencing the mystery and magic of the maze of roads and parking spaces that have been woven from the 100 square miles of pungent tar that encircles the Mayflower complex, Tiki was ready to let me put words in his mouth.
“I used to believe that there was no more confounding web of roadway in the world than the paths that bind the acres of our own Myles Standish State Forest together,” Tiki repeated for me, adding “To enter the Myles Standish without an experienced guide or a detailed map is to experience a true Hansel & Gretel moment.”
But the mystical power of the Mayflower Convenience stores much smaller footprint, may be derived from its very compactness. And it is far more frightening to become lost in the Mayflower’s parking lots, than it is to be lost in Myles Standish – because it just does not seem possible. One moment you are at the self-service gas pump, watching and waving to friends driving by, and the next you are banging on the window of their own Dunkin Donut franchise – desperately asking for directions.
Tiki swears he’s not benefiting from the confusion – though he understands the financial rewards of stranding motorists at that location. All credit Tiki says, is owed the Planning Board – which designed the traffic flow. And judging from some of their other work around town – the Planning Board’s involvement does seem likely.
No matter who gets credit, the Mayflower Convenience Store parking lot is a marvel of traffic flow dis-engineering.
When you leave the pumps, you can’t go left – though South Street is just a few feet away. The arrows – like bread crumbs left by a lost child, turn you to the right. If you thought then, to pick up a cruller and regular Joe to go, again you can’t go left and park in the spaces in front of DoubleD, but instead you’re directed right - along the front of the store.
Careful, the old dead-end that led to the cute little gingerbread ATM is still there, but different. The road now passes the ATM, and descends down a floodlit hill that you never knew existed, complete with speed bumps, traffic lights, past a grove of ancient, gnarled birch trees (the original Billington Rotary I’m told by local psychic historian Dee Jonson) before circling around the back of the compound.
By that point though, panic has set in, and you just want out. Brilliantly, you can’t ask directions at the take-out window of the Dunkin Donuts, unless you have previously ordered at the remote ordering pylon, which you have probably already passed. If you really want a donut, you’re going to have to go around again, and if you just want to get directions, you’re going to have to order first, after you go around again. If you give up, and want to go downtown - toward the waterfront, you are in luck – because you are now in line for a right turn only ramp. But if you give up and want to go west – toward Home Depot, you can’t take the obvious route to South Street - because that’s a right turn only. Instead, again, you’ll have to pass by the front of the convenience/deli/liquor store.
After doing this a few times, the subliminal low-frequency radio broadcasts emanating from the store take effect, and before you leave you will have purchased – at the very least, a lottery ticket, two donuts, coffee, a new oil filter, and a GPS unit. Or, you may become like Tiki, a permanent resident.
Yes, there are many other magical traffic experiences in Plymouth: the blind intersection of Long Pond and Ship Pond Roads; the mayhem that will ensue when the drive thru at the new Mary Lou's backs up onto Hedges Pond Road; the late afternoon sun that blinds you on Route 80; and the dead-ends, bridge-outs, frost-heaves and nameless ponds of Myles Standish, to name just a few. But I feel safe in predicting that – a thousand years from now, visitors from outer space will be bending time in order to experience the mind-altering, suspension-twisting, one-way, no way, wrong way weirdness of the Billington’s own Mayflower Convenience Store.
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