[Reflecting on the rhetorical forms that make up public space.]
This past Sunday, after a lovely day at an apple orchard near Charlottesville, my partner and I got a flat tire on the interstate. We were in between two exits that were several miles away from each other, so we pulled over, half on the grass and half on the pavement of the road. In front of us was one of those green mile-marker signs that read “106.2.” After learning that he did not have the correct sized wrench to remove the lug nuts, we both called our respective road-side assistance companies. Since it was the Sunday of Labor day weekend, we knew it was going to take a long time for someone to reach us.
The woman from AAA asked me on the phone—”where are you located right now?” I told her we are at mile marker 106.2 going west on I-64. That small mile marker sign was the only indication we had to our exact location, and I assumed that there would be no confusion in providing that location marker. You know what they say about assuming.
After sitting on the side of the interstate for over an hour, being rocked by the impact of the wind from each passing car and tractor trailer, I got a message that someone had been dispatched and is on the way. I opened the link to find the driver’s GPS east of Richmond and headed east. I was confused—why was he east of Richmond when we were west of Charlottesville almost two hours away? It turns out he wasn’t meant to be assigned to us since we were so far away. We were reassigned. The next time, someone was dispatched on I-64 in Kentucky, despite my insistence that we were on I-64 in Virginia.
As we approached hour 4 of sitting on the side of the highway, I thought about this assignment. We had put so much trust and faith in that little mile marker sign. I had really thought that if I gave the roadside assistance people the mile number, highway number, and the state that they could find us. It had seemed simple enough, but I imagined somewhere in their digital system theses simple signs must’ve been complicated and convoluted in some way. I thought about the assistance people I talked about on the phone, about how they possibly have never been to Virginia. Maybe one of them has never driven on an interstate. Perhaps one was in training and didn’t know to put the state on the request form.
I have spent an unreasonable amount of my life on interstates, particularly I-81. I can picture almost any exit in my head from 79B in Tennessee to 199 in Pennsylvania. Where I used to live in Southwest Virginia, we use mile signs as our primary form of communicating where we are. If I was on my way home, I would tell my partner that I was at exit 29 and he would know I was about 20 minutes away. Everyone knows that Target is at exit 7 and there’s a Taco Bell at 35 and 17.
For someone like me, road signs and mile markers seem so intuitive, so simple and straight-forward, but I know for a lot of people they are confusing and feel almost cryptic. In that way, they convey different meanings to everyone who sees them. Every person brings their own knowledge and experience when viewing and digesting any piece of rhetoric and will make their own assessments and judgements based on those things. I just hope that the next time I need roadside assistance that mile marker 106.2 means the same thing to me as it does to the person on the phone at AAA.
FOREST THOUGHTS 