For one reason or another over the past week, I had to use the Maine Turnpike almost every day to come and go. And every time I came or went, I thought the same thing as I breezed up the ramps: Holy crap, did I leave my iron on?
But in addition to that, I thought repeatedly about how much cooler the Lewiston exit was before they changed its designation from 13 to whatever it is now. And what do you know, that’s part of my point right there.
Back in the day, a person never forgot the exit number if Lewiston happened to be his home. That’s 13, chum, the number of people sitting around the table at the Last Supper before stuff went horribly awry. The number of steps that lead to the gallows, the number of knots in a traditional noose and — this one really inspires a sense of dread — the age at which your child stops being a cute kid and becomes a teenager.
Please stop shrieking, horrified parent, so I can continue.
Back in the day, when you gave directions to your home to a far-flung visitor, you told them that you were at Exit 13 and you enjoyed seeing them grimace at this irony. Back then it seemed appropriate, didn’t it? In those years, Lewiston was every bit as mysterious and foreboding as the number that marked its place. There was no other city in Maine more deserving of a number routinely skipped by hotel designers all over the world.
To the best of my recollection (holy crap, do I even OWN an iron?) it was roughly 10 years ago that highway people changed the numbering system along the entire length of the turnpike. I don’t remember why they did it. Being highway people, it probably occurred to them that there was absolutely nothing wrong with the present system and so clearly things had to change.
The Gray exit, which used to be lucky No. 11 (it’s the smallest positive integer requiring three syllables and the largest prime number with a single-morpheme name, you know), became Exit 60. Fairfield, with a turnpike sign that displayed the most common bra size as well as the atomic number of Krypton (36) became (yawn) Exit 133. Auburn went from Exit 12 to Exit 75 and I don’t even know how those people show their faces in public anymore.
And Lewiston, formerly the ominous and tremendously cool Exit 13, became dull and vaguely annoying Exit 80, a number I had to look up on the Interwebs because it’s so uninspiring (it’s the length of the Eighty Years War, or the Dutch Revolt,) I can’t make it stick inside my brain.
And I would swear — swear! — that things began to change in Lewiston almost immediately after the old sign came down and the new one went up. The sound of Old West-style gunfire ceased at once. Angry villagers with pitchforks and torches stopped in the middle of the street, scratching their heads and looking dazed, trying to remember exactly who they were mad at. Birds began to chirp and kids went out to play. It was freaky.
In a hundred years or so, when I’m one of those old-timers whittling on my front porch, I’ll tell the young’uns in my gore crow voice all about the old days.
“Lewiston,” I’ll say, and then spit tobacco juice into an old coffee can. “You shoulda seen ‘er when she was Exit 13, boys. Them were wild times. Men used to duke it out with grizzly bears right in the street. We had to carry muskets just to get to the one-room schoolhouse up on the hill. Kids sold ammo instead of lemonade at roadside stands. A day when you only got mugged once was a good day.”
Spit-DING!
And then I’ll shuffle off with my cane and sloshing tobacco can, absolutely certain — without a doubt this time — that I left my iron on.
Mark LaFlamme is a Sun Journal staff writer who likes to leave his irony on. Email him at mlaflamme@sunjournal.com.
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