So I'm up in NH on vacation, and I go out of our dirt road and onto the minor highway that leads to the big city of Keene. There is construction work being done, and I need to stop to allow the traffic going the other way to proceed first. The man holding the stop sign is eating an apple, and leathery tan after a summer working on hot asphalt. He watches me approach, and I can tell he is glad that I slow down and stop at a respectable distance, heeding his sign. I, too, appreciate how he is carefully keeping his eye on the man at the other end of the construction area, who, like him, is also holding a sign. My flagger makes double sure that the other guy has turned his sign from the side that says "Slow" to the side that says "Stop" and that all the oncoming traffic has come through before turning toward me and switching his sign from "Stop" to "Slow."
As I pass by him, I lift my hand from the steering wheel and nod my head - the classic NH car greeting. He nods his head and subtley waves back. A silent thank you and greeting between two strangers on the road. Later that day, while coming back down our dirt road, I have to pull over to let another driver pass (the road is too narrow for two cars astride) and the other driver and I exchange the same NH car greeting.
"Who was that?" my niece from Boston asks. "I don't know," I answer. "Why did you wave to her? she asks. "I don't know," I say again, "That's just what you do up here in NH."
I drive down the Merritt Parkway these days - or Route 95. There is no nodding and acknowledging my fellow drivers there - even on the quieter streets of my suburban CT town. Clearly, by my niece's reaction, they don't do it in Boston, either. Until finding myself greeting people on the road twice today, I forgot how I used to do it all the time when I lived up here. And I'd forgotten how people not only notice each other through the windshields, but acknowledge each other's presence - and even express gratitude for the job they're doing on the road or for being courteous on the road. Where I live now, if I bother to look through the windshield of a neighboring car, I'm more likely to see the driver wrapped up in a phone call or yelling at another driver in frustration or focussing on how they needed to be somewhere 5 minutes ago already.
Of course, I must mention that I was driving my mother's car with NH plates. I happen to know that out-of-staters are not often privvy to these insider interactions. There is a certain tribalism in these behaviors - a kind of "I acknowledge you because you're part of my tribe." But I'm now enough of a world citizen to feel like anyone on the road is a part of my tribe in some way or another - wherever I'm driving. As I again experienced the cammaraderie of the NH roads, I felt a pang of loss, and the lack of some of the tiny, weblike and often intangible ties of interpersonal connection that once exsisted in my, and every, community. People didn't ignore each other. They noticed each other - and acknowledged each other. Thanked each other, even.
So rather than just mourn the way things used to be, I've decided I'm going to bring my old, and yet updated, NH car habits back to CT next week and start smiling at other drivers and raising my hand in greeting and see what happens. I wonder if others are as hungry for small connections with others within community as I am. Why don't you join me?
