896 How to Get Found

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

I delivered more Pilot Logs today. Five hours and 53 miles. All I have left to do now are the far-away ones (Saugerties, Woodstock, Bear Mountain, Poughkeepsie, New Paltz). Unfortunately, I got talked into distributing rack cards to libraries and mansion museums on this side of the river.

"No. NO. I can't. No! I don't want to. No no no! I have a life!" Practice saying that. Damn. The weather is finally good for outside work, and here I am delivering this stuff instead. The same thing happened to me in St. Louis - I volunteered at the veterans' hospital, intending to put in no more than 4-6 hours a week, and when it grew to 35 I thought "Sheesh, if I'm going to work this hard, I may as well get paid for it!", and that's how I ended up rehiring with The Company.

The city of Kingston has some strange streets. Hasbrouck Avenue used to run straight up parallel to Broadway, I guess. But it's been "cut" in two places, and the maps don't show it. Like, for example, when they put in the bypass, it cut Hasbrouck. My first attempt to find the business I was looking for, I found myself on a 1-block piece of Hasbrouck, with four houses, no exit, and no place to turn around. I had to back out. When I found the other piece of Hasbrouck on the other side of the bypass, I was driving up the street, and wham! there's a fence across the street with a parking lot behind it. The city decided to put in a highway department something-or-other, and it was going to take up most of two (small) blocks, so they just plunked down the buildings and lot right across the street. And of course, the "blocks" aren't rectangular, and the area is laced with one-way streets. I got pretty tangled up a couple of times trying to find my way back to Hasbrouck.

Another oddity is "Boulevard". That's it. That's the name of the street - Boulevard.

I was looking for (say) 123 Boulevard, a large electrical business. Naturally, most of the houses and businesses didn't have numbers. I found 89, and a half mile up the road was 178, but no numbers in between, and I didn't see any sign for the business. Finally I pulled into a restaurant parking lot at about where I figured 123 should be, and I called them. They were right next door. It looked like a private residence set back from the road, and the woman told me to go down the driveway to the back, and the office was "in the back".

So I drove to the next driveway. No business sign, but the number 123 was on the FRONT of the mailbox. Hey folks - when someone is driving past and looking for the number, they can't see it when it's on the front of the mailbox! A driver can't be driving safely on a winding busy road with their heads turned to the side. Put the flippin' number on the SIDE! so it can be seen before we actually get to it!

I went to the back, and found another (huge and beautiful) private residence, with a high wooden wall with no gate blocking the parking lot from the house in front. Is this 123 also? Is it the business? Still no identifying sign. There was a small upper parking lot and a small lower lot. There was a fancy front door at the upper lot, and a simpler door and a garage under the house at the lower lot. No signs anywhere.

I went to the front door and rang the bell. I didn't know what else to do. When a woman (the woman I had talked to on the phone) came to the door, she said that I didn't need to ring the bell, I should have just walked in. I said I wasn't sure if this was the office, and she laughed and said "Oh, everybody says that. They all think it's a private residence."

Duh? So, uh, why don't you maybe put up a sign? Even just "Office" on the door would help. As a representative of the museum I had to hold my tongue, but really, folks, aren't some things obvious?

Well, sometimes things aren't very obvious. This building was huge, fancy, a fantastic view, a glass room, wings with huge windows, beautiful landscaping. If the setting is any sign, this is a hugely successful business, even if no one can find it. Maybe they don't want "drop in" customers. Maybe all their business is from building contractors who need to know only the phone number. That's still no reason to make it so hard on delivery folks - of which there must be a few, since she said "everybody says that".

Or maybe they're a front, or a money-laundry. There used to be a fancy horse farm down the road that was a Mafia front, until the owner was convicted of something-or-other, and it was sold. But if they're a front, it's unlikely they'd advertise in the Pilot Log. A tax dodge would, though. We've got a lot of them around here, too. But tax dodges don't usually look so successful. Nah. Don't know what their story is.