EMPTY AMERICA: Boston

I slept in my car in a truck stop about 90 minutes outside of New York. The rain was pouring which oddly enough lulled me to sleep.


When I woke I continued to Boston, and 2 things happened on the way:


First of all, there was a fair amount of traffic. And rain. I was in the far left lane passing a big rig when I saw a car heading right for me, ready to t-bone me from the other side of the freeway! There was a concrete barrier between the north and south-bound lanes, which stopped this car in it’s tracks and sent it spinning back into traffic.


I’ve been driving for years in some of the most congested, dangerous driving conditions, but I have never seen a wreck actually happen. I’ve come across one right as it was finishing or had just finished, but, to pile on the nerves that I had gotten from New York and the lack of comfortable sleep already in me, to see a car barreling towards you, to see the eyes of that driver wide with fear and angst, woke me up and tightened my grip on the wheel. It was all too real and, metaphorically, the world was spinning out of control.


The other thing that happened drove home a political point for me. Crossing through Rhode Island, they were actually funneling all passenger vehicles off of the freeway and through the first rest stop in the state, just past the border. You couldn’t pass it because the police presence would have you do otherwise.


Pulling up the ramp to the rest area, it felt like entering the movie set for “Outbreak.” There was cops and military personal and a few Humvees and personnel in full rain gear and masks and gloves. It felt like entering a legitimate quarantine zone.


There were signs warning travelers that if you’re coming from NY, NJ or Conn, you must quarantine for 14 days if you’re stopping in Rhode Island.


I pulled over and was asked if I’m staying in the state.


“Just driving through.”


“OK. You can go.”


I slowly drove off but realized that each state, with the federal government’s response, is truly being left to their own devices. This was the only stop I had encountered and Rhode Island was forced to take it upon themselves to do their own screenings.


Certainly a state as small as Rhode Island is probably easier to lock down, but it shouldn’t be any states individual job to respond to a national crisis.


I’m not sure what would have happened if I was saying I was staying. Would they put me in their own state-mandated quarantine? Tested me on the spot? Interrogated me? Was it going to be like this at every state border from here on out?


In Boston I went to the Commons and the Waterfront, 2 areas that, in the past, I’d known to be hubs. I’d like to think that the rain had just kept this city quiet on this day, but I knew that Bostonians didn’t give a flip about that. If you want to go somewhere, you go. Weather is only debilitating if you can’t leave your house.


The Commons and surrounding streets were ghost towns. This is a huge park in the center of the Boston business and tourist district and there wasn’t a soul to be seen, not even the ever-present homeless population I had gotten used to.


The Waterfront was the same: Nothing. It was dreary, sure, but Boston had quickly gotten on the short-list of the hardest hit of the pandemic areas and I was sure everybody was holing up in their cozy apartments and homes in the suburbs.


To be able to walk through a huge city, cross roads or stand in the middle of streets to take pictures, really drives home the feeling that this is what a post-apocalyptic world would be like. No one to talk to, no one getting in your shots, no one telling you where to go and what to do. I would love to say, in this birthplace of freedom and revolution, that it does feel exactly that: Free.


It doesn’t. I thought to myself that this is the place where America started. Is this where it ends?