Notes from Maine - 2025/12/07

I was a bad person this week.

I like to think of myself as a (generally) good person—I’m sure we all do. 

My first job in Maine was for Digital Equipment Corporation in Augusta. That company was already in a steep decline when I started, but I couldn’t have cared less. Job opportunities were few and far between. I felt lucky just to have a job and learn new skills. Working on a production line, I met all kinds of fascinating people. One woman loved Elvis so deeply that she would nearly faint even at the sight of his picture. A man sat next to me who would often fall asleep at his workstation until the hot soldering iron began to burn his own flesh. He showed up with a limp one Monday morning. He had accidentally shot himself through the back of his thigh and bandaged it on his own because he didn’t trust hospitals. 

After I switched to third shift (for the pay differential) I met even stranger folks. The guy across from me was quiet until one night when he revealed his future goal. In the Navy, an accident had nearly taken his life and had permanently disfigured him. His plan was to work until his nemesis got out of prison. Then, he would go murder that man. I’m not sure if he ever followed through, but he sure did talk about it a lot. Maybe that means he was talking himself out of it?

One annoying gentleman, Frank, was older than the rest of us. He had transferred from the DEC stronghold in Maynard, Massachusetts and he loved to tell us about the good old days of soaring profits and giant Thanksgiving turkeys. On Thanksgiving, every DEC employee received a turkey as a bonus. 

One night he said, “I’ll never understand the traffic circles in Augusta. Down in Massachusetts, the person entering the circle has the right-of-way. That keeps the traffic flowing. Here, we’re supposed to wait before we enter?” He probably said “rotary” or “roundabout”—I’m not sure. At that time, I think a lot of people in Augusta said “circle,” but I could be wrong. One thing we all agreed on: Frank was crazy. When we were leaving work in the morning, people gave Frank’s car a wide berth. Frank always thought he had the right-of-way.

To be fair, there is one rotary in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts where normal rules still don’t apply. That rotary defies all logic. It is the conflict of seven major roads and has been featured in “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” for having zero traffic signals and signage indicating that traffic in the circle must yield to incoming traffic. And, to be fair, apparently many rotaries in Massachusetts have their own rules that were formulated before “modern” rotary rules were settled upon. Still, Frank was a nut job. 

Maine has been slow to adopt traffic circles. We had two in Augusta on either side of the Memorial Bridge. They were built in 1949. At the other end of Western Ave., we have a famous merge before you get to the Prescott Road. Traffic backs up there like crazy. In 2019, there was a concerted effort around the state to encourage “Alternate Merges” or “Zipper Merges” so that people wouldn’t coagulate in the through lane and ignore the lane that was going to end. On Western Ave., in the afternoon, right-hand lane people had no social standing, no freedom, and no rights. They were expected to languish in that lane until the generosity of a left-hand lane person deigned to allow them to enter. Now, it’s unclear which lane goes through and which one is ending. The sign says, “ALTERNATE MERGE” and shows two arrows taking their turn (technically, the right arrow goes first, which must have been scandalous when the sign was installed). 

When that change was made, many people hadn’t encountered an Alternate Merge before. It was not part of the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices for Streets and Highways (MUTCD), which offers guidance on signage for the US. The idea of “late/zipper” merges wasn’t codified in the MUTCD until January of 2024. The idea is simple: use both lanes until the last moment, and then take turns. It’s often the simplest ideas that cause the most confusion and anger. 

“I’ve been waiting in the CORRECT lane all this time,” I might have said at some point in the past. My stepfather was the head of Traffic Engineering for a county in Virginia. He was the first person to tell me that it was stupid to not use every part of both lanes. He was a pretty taciturn fellow, but he told me twice that it wasn’t “wrong” to drive past waiting traffic. Unused lanes cause congestion. For me, the Alternate Merge signs were just reinforcing what my stepfather already taught me: in a kind, gracious society, it’s sometimes efficient to allow someone to go ahead of you. 

Back to my original point: I was a bad person this week.

I drove across the old bridge on my way to the feed store on Monday. On the other side of the bridge, just before the traffic signal, a person was trying to pull out of the parking lot while I was stopped at the light. They could have saved time by going down the row the other direction and they would have ended up at the signal with the green light. But, no, they waited, wanting to pull in front of me when the light changed. There were two cars behind me. I could have let them go. 

I did not. 

When they crept forward, I kept distance with the vehicle in front as it began to roll, offering no quarter. I had to swerve a bit to avoid clipping their bumper, but I did not let them in. This wasn’t a merge. They were at a stop sign in a parking lot and I was the traffic that the sign was ordering them to wait for. I turned to see their apoplexy as I passed. It would have cost me nothing to let them in, just as it would cost them nothing and even saved them time to exit the parking lot further south, where they would have had the traffic signal to their benefit. 

Somewhere in my memory, Frank was smiling and my stepfather was shaking his head.