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A Place to Stand
If you have ever gone through a toll booth, you know that your relationship to the person in the booth is not the most intimate you'll ever have. It is one of life's frequent non-encounters: You hand over some money; you might get change; you drive off. I have been through every one of the 17 toll booths on the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge on thousands of occasions, and never had an exchange worth remembering with anybody.
Late one morning in 1984, headed for lunch in San Francisco, I drove toward one of the booths. I heard loud music. It sounded like a party, or a Michael Jackson concert. I looked around. No other cars with their windows open. No sound trucks. I looked at the toll booth. Inside it, the man was dancing.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “I'm having a party.” he said. “What about the rest of these people?” I looked over at other booths; nothing moving there. “They're not invited.” I had a dozen other questions for him, but somebody in a big hurry to get somewhere started punching his horn behind me and I drove off. But I made a note to myself: Find this guy again. There's something in his eye that says there's magic in his toll booth.
Months later I did find him again, still with the loud music, still having a party. Again I asked:“What are you doing?” He said:“I remember you from the last time.I'm still dancing. I'm having the same party.” I said:“Look. What about the rest of the people?” He said:“Stop. What do those look like to you?”
He pointed down the row of toll booths. “They look like tool booths.” “No imagination!” I said:“Okay, I give up. What do they look like to you?” He said:“Vertical coffins.” “What are you talking about?” “I can prove it. At 8:30 every morning, live people get in. Then they die for eight hours.
