In the Greater DC area, thousands of people use slug lines daily to get to work. In order for a driver to use the HOV (High Occupancy Vehicle) lanes, he or she has to have at least three people in the vehicle. If you have less that three, you find yourself a Slug or two waiting at the slug line. It’s a
win-win situation. Slugs get a free ride into (and out of) the city, and the driver escapes the snail lanes on I 395 and is permitted to zip along in the HOV lanes.
I live in Springfield, Virginia and have been picking up Slugs for years. I don’t know where the name came from. I always associated it with putting slugs in a juke box or a vending machine to make it work. Slugs were the same size as coins.
No government agency or official administers the slug lines. We are convinced that if the government got involved, the system would fail (they would also change the name to something more official sounding). In Springfield, we used to pick up Slugs in the Long John Silver parking lot. LJS closed their store, and put up an eight-foot chain-link fence to keep out the slug line (liability concerns?). The next day the slug line had reassembled next door in the Circuit City parking lot.
The Slugs form two lines, one for drivers going over the 14th Street Bridge and one going over the Memorial Bridge. You drive up to the front of the queue and say something like “two for 14th and K.” The message is passed down the line and two Slugs get into your car. There is also extensive slug-line etiquette, but you will be pleased to know that I don’t intend to address it. If there are more drivers than Slugs (it is a fluid process), then the drivers get out of their vehicles, form a queue, and wait for the Slug to appear.
We picked up a young woman who had been in the United States for only three months. She told us that the slug line saved her a lot of money, but she wasn’t about to tell her parents in South Africa. She said, “If I told my parents that I traveled to work by climbing into cars with people I do not know, they would demand that I come home.”
At the end of the workday the slug lines form in the District. One of the more popular locations for Springfield is 14th and Constitution. A few years back, a new Chief of Police arrived in DC and decided that picking up Slugs on 14th Street was delaying traffic (it probably was). So he dispatched some of DC’s finest to disband the slug line. The police waived cars on and disbanded the line. That lasted for two days. Tom Davis and other Northern Virginia Congressman threatened to hold hearings on the Hill to determine why the Chief was mistreating Slugs. The Chief then acknowledged that there was justification for having a slug line, but he intended to find a better location. I guess he is still looking, because we are still at 14th and Constitution.
We were coming home one night and there were just the two of us. Terry worked with me and she would hitch a ride some evenings. When we arrived at 14th and Constitution, there were no Slugs. It is three lanes in each direction and so I put on my flashers and waited. We then saw a woman working her way across 14th Street, obviously heading for the slug line. Traffic was creeping and she crossed in front of a car that didn’t see her. There was a screech of brakes and the woman jumped clear. As she got into the car she said, “I thought he saw me.” Then Terry said, “That was close, and if he had hit you, no telling how long we would have had to wait.”
All posts by pajarice
How Much Does a Light Bulb Cost the Army?
I spent most of my formative years in the Army. I was a JAG Officer for about 28 years. When I mention JAG, peoples’ eyes light up and I know they have seen the JAG TV program. So, I have to explain to them that I never flew a jet, captured terrorists, nor disarmed a nuclear weapon. And, if the TV show had followed the highlights of my career, it would have been cancelled after the second week.
I had two tours in Germany and my second tour was in Frankfurt. My family was with me and we were assigned to military family quarters outside of Frankfurt in the little town of Bad Vibel. Little US conclaves like ours were quite common throughout Germany. All of the family quarters in Germany had a lot in common. For example, every light had the same type of globe covering it. I can still see them and I am sure you can too. The globe screwed into the fixture. When a light burned out, it took me 30 minutes to unscrew the globe. Paint had run down into the threads and I had to scrape the paint out with a knife. It took a lot of pressure to unscrew the globe. The second time it happened, I went through the same drill. I scraped and then wrapped the globe in a dish towel. As I applied pressure, I heard the globe cracking.
Time to call housing maintenance. I don’t do cracked globes. I had visions of three hours in an emergency room, a large portion of which I would be spending explaining how it happened. One call later and a German maintenance man showed up with a brown paper sack and a hammer. He put the sack over the globe and smashed it with the hammer. A new light and a new globe and we were back in business.
The next time a light burned out, I went through the same drill. It probably only lasted 20 minutes this time. I didn’t feel the need to hear glass cracking to call for help. This time, a different German maintenance man, but it looked like the same sack and hammer. I couldn’t believe it. Every time a light burned out in family quarters, it cost Uncle Sam a new light and a new globe!
As a general rule, it is not good to be the hero of something you are writing, but I broke the rule here. I concluded that each time the family quarters were painted (about every three to four years), all the globes were sealed. If the painting contract required the painters to remove the globes before they painted, the globes would not be sealed by the fresh paint.
At that time the Army had what was called the Suggestion Awards Program where they would actually pay a soldier money for coming up with a suggestion that would save the Army money. I figured out the number of family quarters in Germany and multiplied it by the number of globes in each unit and then multiplied that figure by the number of German maintenance men walking around with brown paper sacks and hammers. I multiplied that by the cost of a globe and determined that we could save enough money to put another brigade in Europe.
The moral of this story is that you will never get rich submitting suggestions to the Army. My suggestion was approved and I received a check for $83.72. Why such a strange amount? Because the Army withheld taxes from my hundred dollar prize. The only thing I regret is not framing the check.
Marty
You’ll notice that I entitled this catogory “poems,” and not poetry. This may be subtle, but I don’t think of myself as a poet. A poet is “a creative artist of great imagination and expressive gifts and special sensitivity to his medium.” I’m not sure I know what that means, but it ain’t me. I make things rhyme. I probably do better than country music, but that’s not saying much (I love country music and really don’t care when it doesn’t rhyme). So let’s just call these things poems and be done with it.
Marty Beirne is the founding partner of Beirne, Maynard & Parsons in Houston, Texas. This is a litigation firm that has been extremely successful under Marty’s leadership.
Well, a few years back (more that two and less than 15), Marty’s family decided to celebrate his 50th birthday with a Texas style party at Rio Ranch. My wife and I were unable to attend, so I wrote the following poem for my dear friend.
ODE TO AN AGING BARRISTER
Happy be the man who has a friend, Marty,
A man much too wise to be only forty.
A man quite intense, who pushes to the limit,
A man who love life, cramming every last minute.
A half century’s gone, a substantial term,
But he’s witty and prosperous and has his own firm.
He’s loved by his friends and respected by his foes,
He flies like an eagle, and dumps on the crows.
But fifty is a milestone,
be hail and be hearty.
Let’s go to Rio Ranch,
for a Texas style party.
We’ll lift one for the guy,
for he’s a special friend,
who electrifies the air,
and hangs in there to the end.
Bespectacled and hair thinning,
but still oh, he’s so nifty.
I’m sorry I missed the party,
Let’s do it again in fifty!
Getting a Slow Start
I don’t know whether I am technologically challenged, or technically challenged or just challenged. Probably, all of the above. But, I knew I was in trouble when I couldn’t understand the tutorial.
I am determined, however, to have a blog and the fact that you are reading this indicates that I am making progress.
The blog site started me out with an authorization code that had 31 characters, and my first task was to convert the authorization code into a handy-dandy password. It took me two days (with the help of support service) to accomplish the fete. I kept getting a message that said, “Authorization is denied because you have an incorrect customer number.” They gave me the customer number. I was looking at it in their email. That customer number was the only thing I knew was right. The next day, the support service technician told me to ignore the message. Not a warm fuzzy, but when I resubmitted the password, it went through.
I think many of us have a love/hate relationship with our computers. The more frustrating the computer becomes, the greater the joy when it does what you want it to, even if it is just changing the password. I think I am going to get to know many of the support service technicians on a first name basis.