I pulled a fluorescent green envelope off my windshield last week and tossed it disgustedly into my car. Five minutes over the limit and they stick me for fifteen bucks. And it’s not as if—
Uh—
Wait a minute.
I picked up the envelope and read it more carefully this time.
City of Concord
P.O. Box 9582
Manchester, NH 03108-9582
Mmph.
You know—life shouldn’t be this hard. Getting a parking ticket should be a minor annoyance, not a journey into the Twilight Zone.
The City of Concord, apparently, has moved to Manchester. I don’t know what to say.
One’s grip on reality can be a tenuous thing. To maintain mine, I find it useful to be able to rely on the relative constancy of the universe, or at least the solar system. When I go to bed at night, I like the feeling of confidence that the sun will rise in the morning. I take comfort in knowing that spring follows winter, and that “i” comes before “e,” except after “c” and in words like “weigh” and “neighbor” (and, of course, in words like “heinie,” in which you can have it both ways).
Any disruption in the natural order threatens to set me loose from my moorings. In recent years, several imponderable events of the hell-freezes-over variety have left me wobbly: The Red Sox won the World Series. The Democrats took control of the New Hampshire House and Senate. And, most amazing of all, one day I dropped a piece of toast, and it landed with the buttered side up.
But such random miracles, although startling in isolation, are statistically unsurprising, given the element of chance involved in each. It’s a little different when a city changes its domicile. That is an act of pure, volitional weirdness; and it shouldn’t be permitted.
I do understand that geography is not what it once was. I realize that the New York Giants actually play in New Jersey. I followed the Los Angeles Angels as they became the California Angels, then the Anaheim Angels, and finally, stupidly, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim—without ever moving their physical location.
I came of age in western Pennsylvania, drinking Rolling Rock beer, with the famous back-of-the-bottle legend: “From the glass-lined tanks of old Latrobe, we tender this premium beer for your enjoyment, as a tribute to your good taste. It comes from the mountain springs to you.” The bottles still carry that same quaint legend, even though the company was bought last year by Anheuser-Busch and immediately moved out of old Latrobe. The beer is now brewed in Newark, New Jersey, not far from the airport, and the water comes from the Wanaque Reservoir in Passaic County. I’m guessing the glass-lined tanks are history.
So, yes, I understand that things move around and often show up in unexpected places. But a whole city? For one thing, where in Manchester is there room to deposit Concord’s 40,000 people, not to mention its 40,000 traffic lights?
Or maybe just the city offices have moved—some kind of government-in-exile deal, sort of like the Dalai Lama’s relocation to India, or the Shah of Iran’s taking up residence (did you know this?) in Potomac, Maryland. I haven’t read about a coup in Concord, and the streets have seemed peaceful, but I can’t keep track of everything.
Which makes me wonder: if the government has gone into exile, will anyone really care if I don’t pay my parking ticket? Not that it’s all about me.
Okay, I’m fooling around. I know the city’s physical location hasn’t moved—it’s just a post office box. Still, couldn’t Concord have rented a post office box closer to home—in, say, Concord? Is the city trying to keep its whereabouts secret? Is it worried about stalkers?
The answer, like all answers, can be found on the Internet. The City of Concord’s website gives this explanation about traffic violation payments:
The payment is directed to a Manchester, NH, post office because that is the location of the bank facility that processes City of Concord citation payments. Your payment will be correctly applied against your City of Concord citation.
Well, okay. That I can understand, even if I don’t approve. The city has not moved, nor is it trying to fool anyone by using a Manchester mailing address. It’s just business.
But it’s still wrong. As it turns out, this event didn’t push me over the edge, but we’ll never know how close I came. I don’t believe I should have to perform on-line research to assure myself that my capital city hasn’t packed up and moved. And I can’t make any promises about what might happen if I get up some morning and read that the local baseball team has been renamed the Concord Quarry Dogs of Anaheim.
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Are you wondering whether you missed an edition of The Johnston Papers? No, it’s not you—it’s us. Distracted by the end of the legislative session, we skipped a week. As of today, we’re back on the regular fortnightly schedule. Two weeks hence, look for some valuable advice on torturing deer flies.
