Dewey's visit to the International Arts Festival

We have a project this weekend. Dewey came home from school with Nolan, the Kindergartener. Dewey is a class bear that "visits" each child. We were fortunate enough to get him for a whole weekend. Now Dewey comes with an old-styled black and white composition notebook, his diary of his travels if you will. I wonder how we will translate this evening into Kindergartenese for Dewey's journal?

It all began when we took the 5th grader to a friend's house for a camp-out. Dewey came along for the ride. After dropping off the camper, we stopped by the grocery store. That was when we noticed things turning strange. Nolan, Dewey and I remained in the van as Scott ran in for a few things we needed for supper. When he returned, he commented. "There's going ot be a blizzard. Or at least people are shopping like one's coming...huge loads of food rolling down the checkouts." We shrugged it off, not realizing they knew more than we did about what had happened since we drove across the city to drop off the camper. Our town had subsequently closed, and we never saw it coming.

As we continued down the road, we hardly cast a glance at the traffic cops at first. Lately, every other street corner has a new townhousing complex or a trendy artsy strip-mall under construction. (We're trying as a community to become known as the arts and design district for the north side of the city. A wealthy suburb like ours has delusions of "arts patronage" grandeur in its bloodline, I guess.) In any case, at first the flashing lights and traffic cop did not alarm us. But as we took the first side jaunt, we realized that these detours were now in layers, like an onion. First, there were the basic construction detours that we'd learned to maneuver from days gone by. But layered over this today were the detours prompted by the International Arts Festival street closures. It will be going on all weekend. Never mind that road work and torn up parking lots make parking a nightmare, and never mind that there is a home football game going on tonight that will draw away potential festival attenders, and just ignore that electrical storm with high winds that is already invading town. We WILL patronize the arts because that is what cultured people do! (Nouveau riche, I'd say, if I weren't a bumpkin myself and therefore outside both arenas: the one for preeners and the one for snubbers.) Finally, after several false turns we got hopelessly lost in a residential community.

I made the comment to Scott. "You know this is one of those good ideas gone bad because it was too narrow-minded. The idea was to make these cul-de-sac, no-through-way communities as a way to keep the children safe. In these places, they aren't supposed to be run down by the people who simply want a quick cut through. But when the through-ways are all closed down, you get trapped in these things..."

"...and then you get mad and drive too fast and run the kids down anyway," he said.

Eventually, we found a route that gave us a chance to ask a cop, "How do we get home if we live back there?"
He referenced a road that was the one route he thought still open.
"Nope, the ones doing construction closed that one," we said. He being a festival traffic cop instead of a construction traffic cop told us, "I don't know then. Ask a city cop."

Finally, we found an open road that led home, but because people had decided to park on this road, it was now, in effect, a one way route on which thousands hoped to venture around the festival closures or else to park. When we managed to navigate to our own driveway, we breathed a sigh of relief and then set ourselves up to watch the show: the line of frustrated drivers taking their cars hopefully down and then angrily back up the cul-de-sac road that passed in front of our own house. Rats after cheese, Scott decided. "You know, we could probably make some money if we set up a stand that sells maps showing how to get away from here," he said.

And we salved our bitter nerves with wry comments like:

"I know what the International in the naming of this festival is all about, it describes how far you have to go to find the end of the detour around the festival."
"...or describes the trafffic patterns being used, like ones commonly found in places like Mexico City."

Rain dropped by the bucketful on the back deck, and lightning struck. We couldn't help but laugh. You'd have to know the history of the snobbery that drives a lot of community projects around here to truly appreciate how nakedly ironic is the failure of this festival.

"I can't tell you how much I hope it's still raining tomorrow morning," Scott said, envisioning trying to leave the house on day two of this entrapment in order to take the Kindergartener to play soccer. Dewey will be disappointed if he misses watching Nolan play the game, but I expect we can find some other way to entertain him...until the "blizzard" passes.