Trucks 9, Cars 7
It has become an annual rite of spring for a few friends of ours to gather on the front porch of Shelley Scoggin's Front Street, Greenport, health food store, The Market, on the Friday evening of Memorial Day weekend to welcome in the new "season." (This year, there also was an extra/added attraction: Shelley's birthday, which fell on Friday, May 26.)
So it was that about a dozen of us assembled again this year on a drizzly and foggy Friday eve. The weather may have been sketchy, but there was something magical about the scene: what with the carousel across the street in Mitchell Park, glowing in the mist; the Shelter Island ferry criss-crossing in the background; the new, beautiful Greenport theater sign ablaze "down street"; and the wail of a LIRR train whistle serving as the background music. Only in Greenport...
And then there was the annual "count," a game we began several years ago as a means of measuring how far Greenport has come since we moved here in the dark ages of the '70s. It began years ago with seeing how many Mercedes Benz would pass by on Front Street in a five-minute span. Memory fails, but I think the count the first year was one or two Benz. More recently, we'd try to see how many people we could name as they drove by in their cars. At first, it seemed like we could ID every third or fourth driver, but by last May we were down to every 10th or 15th. Clearly, Greenport was changing; Greenport had been "discovered" (again).
This year, we tried a variation on those old themes with a five-minute vehicle count that pitted Mercedes against pickup trucks, the ride of choice of many a North Forker. Can you guess who won? It was touch and go there for the first four minutes, with German luxury cars enjoying a slight lead over pick-ups, but the "natives" rallied in the last minute, finally edging the "visitors," 9-7. (It might have ended up in a tie, but the "judges" declined to award two points to Team Germany for a sleek BMW that parked illegally in front of a fire hydrant while its driver chatted on his cell phone.)
Same old Greenport... for now, at least.
So it was that about a dozen of us assembled again this year on a drizzly and foggy Friday eve. The weather may have been sketchy, but there was something magical about the scene: what with the carousel across the street in Mitchell Park, glowing in the mist; the Shelter Island ferry criss-crossing in the background; the new, beautiful Greenport theater sign ablaze "down street"; and the wail of a LIRR train whistle serving as the background music. Only in Greenport...
And then there was the annual "count," a game we began several years ago as a means of measuring how far Greenport has come since we moved here in the dark ages of the '70s. It began years ago with seeing how many Mercedes Benz would pass by on Front Street in a five-minute span. Memory fails, but I think the count the first year was one or two Benz. More recently, we'd try to see how many people we could name as they drove by in their cars. At first, it seemed like we could ID every third or fourth driver, but by last May we were down to every 10th or 15th. Clearly, Greenport was changing; Greenport had been "discovered" (again).
This year, we tried a variation on those old themes with a five-minute vehicle count that pitted Mercedes against pickup trucks, the ride of choice of many a North Forker. Can you guess who won? It was touch and go there for the first four minutes, with German luxury cars enjoying a slight lead over pick-ups, but the "natives" rallied in the last minute, finally edging the "visitors," 9-7. (It might have ended up in a tie, but the "judges" declined to award two points to Team Germany for a sleek BMW that parked illegally in front of a fire hydrant while its driver chatted on his cell phone.)
Same old Greenport... for now, at least.
posted by Troy Gustavson at 11:08 AM
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