What was I thinking?
This column, penned for so many decades by various writers in this long-established newspaper, has been aptly named “On the Water.” It’s a pretty clear and accurate description of its intended content and hopefully the audience appreciates its narrative for better or worse.
All of a sudden it’s July and the traffic is more ferocious than ever. One of the silly things I have indulged myself in is counting the vehicles that whiz by my front window on Noyac Road, the second busiest road on the South Fork. I’ve been doing it since the mid-1980s. The protocol I used is the number of vehicles going east and west during two consecutive four-minute periods. I was anxious to see if the AAA’s projection for travel during the holidays of more than 40 million vehicle trippers had any basis in fact. At any rate, on July 3 shortly after 3 p.m., I counted the most vehicles ever. Based on the number going east and west in eight minutes, the projected hourly rate was 1,575 vehicles per hour, the kind of count one might expect for the Long Island Expressway at a point where Suffolk County and Nassau County meet.
For the record: If the reason some people are grumpy cats about Ed's Lobster Bar is that they miss the old Bay Burger, would it make them feel better to know that Joe Tremblay, an owner of the old joint, tried their lobster roll and loved it? I read that on the internet.
“Ballpark” is an architecture critic’s paean to the idiosyncrasies of old beauties like Fenway Park and the smart city-integrating design of new stadiums like Camden Yards. But hold the “concrete doughnuts,” please.
