Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcaned stories all the time. The glad you
Speaker 1: are here. Let's get into it. The first time I
Speaker 1: sought Alvoldo Lane on my manifest I thought it was
Speaker 1: a type of just another small glitch in the mildly
Speaker 1: chaotic morning churn at the deeper out here, dust and
Speaker 1: coffee spill across both the warehouse floor and the edges
Speaker 1: of our screens, and even the supposedly automated routing software
Speaker 1: is forever making up new towns or deciding I can
Speaker 1: reach two hill farms fifteen miles apart in the span
Speaker 1: of twenty minutes. Usually I shrug it off, but this
Speaker 1: stop sat squarely in the middle of my list, wedged
Speaker 1: between routine holes to bent Swamp Road and little River
Speaker 1: turned frouts I knew by heart. I thumbed through my
Speaker 1: stack of beat up paper maps, a habit from before
Speaker 1: the company upgraded to the tablets we all now use.
Speaker 1: I trust those cracked atlasses and tan in so it's
Speaker 1: more than any set of glowing pixels. No sign of
Speaker 1: old Olane anywhere in the zone marked for that day's wrote.
Speaker 1: I tried the GPS, not because I believed it would
Speaker 1: know better, but because habit is stubborn. It wanted to
Speaker 1: redirect me to order drive two counties away. Then Alda
Speaker 1: would lane somewhere up near the Canadian line. But Alder
Speaker 1: Layne north will out of VITTI flat out didn't exist.
Speaker 1: Drivers filtered in. Kenny already winded from shovelin a spot
Speaker 1: clear first aiding forward lelad heads had slung so low
Speaker 1: she might trip on it, handing out double shot espressos
Speaker 1: and half joking for its of manifest swaps. I try
Speaker 1: to snide. Anyone know where Alder Lane went missing to.
Speaker 1: No one batted an. I no Alder that's north Willard,
Speaker 1: said Lee, barely looking up from her phone. Tickle lefted
Speaker 1: the big sycamore, can't miss it. Kenny, lacing his boots,
Speaker 1: disagreed with a practice grunt. No, as the cut off
Speaker 1: pass Miller Road used to be the short cut before
Speaker 1: the new covet washed the old bridge out past the
Speaker 1: feet store. Kenny, rattling her clipward in the far corner,
Speaker 1: called over, just follow the directions. It's always in there somewhere.
Speaker 1: She waved vaguely at the general direction of the welter
Speaker 1: version of encouragement. What struck me wasn't just that they
Speaker 1: all claimed no older lane, or that no two could
Speaker 1: agree on word lay. It was that no one seemed
Speaker 1: the least big curious about the contradiction. They offered their
Speaker 1: not matching directions. They're confident shrugs, then moved right back
Speaker 1: to the breakfast sandwiches, door stow, stable guns and last
Speaker 1: minute lottery pool squabbles. As if Older Lane was an
Speaker 1: old Neighborho's house kept moving around, but forgetting where it
Speaker 1: was supposed to be, never matted. I circled Older Lane
Speaker 1: on my planner and all caps unknown to investigate and
Speaker 1: resolve that to day, on my watch, I'd get to
Speaker 1: the bottom of it, even if it meant circling a
Speaker 1: village three times, eating cold lunch in the cab, and
Speaker 1: risking jokes at my expense during afternoon check in. Routines
Speaker 1: are sacred, and I prided myself on knowing every ditch,
Speaker 1: knuckle and barn shaped shadow on these roads. If there
Speaker 1: was a lane I didn't recognize, it wasn't because it
Speaker 1: was simply lost. There had to be an explanation. Asterisk, asterisk, astorisk.
Speaker 1: Maybe I should introduce myself properly. Jack Channel thirty eight
Speaker 1: to warn devty of practical shoes and higher octane feel.
Speaker 1: I've run regional delivery for green Man to Midline twelve
Speaker 1: years in change, enough time to memorize every fathom of
Speaker 1: back road between the Massachusetts border and the Lake Champlain Narrows.
Speaker 1: Not that I'm local born, but you'd be hard pressed
Speaker 1: to find someone who remembers more birthdays, farm reopenings, or
Speaker 1: crack drivers than I do. Our outfit does not mix
Speaker 1: a little too big to know every one by name,
Speaker 1: a little too small to have its own HR department,
Speaker 1: with a difference between your package actually landing at your
Speaker 1: door and the post office neighbor three towns over. Because
Speaker 1: out here, distances aren't measured in exact miles, but in stories.
Speaker 1: Who loves wherein Whose mother had the best apple cido
Speaker 1: when the snow came early? The company trucks are reliable,
Speaker 1: if relics. We have more bungee cords than spare parts,
Speaker 1: but somehow always wrangle a solution. Each day starts with Penny,
Speaker 1: who handles dispatch on weekdays, karaoke on weekends, rattling off
Speaker 1: lists that sound to outsiders as if fruit and by
Speaker 1: a tipsy poured Walcott's Corners, sun Golden Lane, Quail Hollow,
Speaker 1: the hollow by the old in mail books, then back
Speaker 1: forbake goods at the Cookson's. Only some of those exist
Speaker 1: on any map, a value precision for reasons that go
Speaker 1: beyond job pride. These roads aren't just lined on paper.
Speaker 1: They are the shape of living memory. When mud season hits.
Speaker 1: If you say, take the back wrap past Duncan's pond,
Speaker 1: I picture the angle of ruts in the south side
Speaker 1: turn away fog lifts before noon, a split trung gash tree.
Speaker 1: My mental map is sharper than most. This is my
Speaker 1: daily claim to solace and skill, my field of control.
Speaker 1: In a message shifting network, lel Out, sharp eyed and
Speaker 1: chronically caffeine deficient, rolls the loading dock. If I ask
Speaker 1: about an address, she crossed references on two screens in
Speaker 1: a battered index box. Once she caught a routing error
Speaker 1: that would have sent a father's birthday cart on an
Speaker 1: accidental of a night trek to Indiana. Her answer to
Speaker 1: older Lane, however, was a shrug. It must have been
Speaker 1: added to the system last year. New neighborhoods pop up
Speaker 1: all the time out here, but we both knew that
Speaker 1: was nonsense. Kenny who remembers the Big storm of ninety
Speaker 1: three as if he carved upon too. Every organ town
Speaker 1: tells stories of roads for shuffle by time and weather,
Speaker 1: But any time I pressed for details on older lane,
Speaker 1: his face clouded stories. They mean to half remembered sketches
Speaker 1: about their curve past the old Twinson place. Or maybe
Speaker 1: it was after he gesture vaguely with a gloved hand,
Speaker 1: eyes already sliding to the next topic. Here is the truth.
Speaker 1: In this region, directions are inherited and only half anchored
Speaker 1: to landmarks, local swap stories about the house with the
Speaker 1: Blue Hyde Rangers, or where Grammar got lost just before
Speaker 1: the covered bridge gave out. The gaps in the map
Speaker 1: are filled not by coordinates but by colloquial glue in memory.
Speaker 1: Yet this address fold olane through sand in my gears,
Speaker 1: not just because it was unfamiliar, but because everyone acted
Speaker 1: as if it should be familiar, and treated my confusion
Speaker 1: as odd, not the lanes. I'm not sentimental, or at
Speaker 1: least try not to be. But when something pokes a
Speaker 1: hole in your idea of order, you don't just let
Speaker 1: it seal itself up. I decided as I pulled the
Speaker 1: box truck away from the deeper that morning. That outsettled
Speaker 1: the Old Olaine question for good, for my pride, and
Speaker 1: for the quiet, nerdyjoy that comes from finding sense tuck
Speaker 1: just beneath confusion astoris astrus asterisk. Driving out past not
Speaker 1: will Aard, framed by mourning haze and the good, sharp
Speaker 1: green of early grass, I scanned for side roads with
Speaker 1: an intensity that bordered uncomical. If Old Olane was just
Speaker 1: a paperwork relic or someone's misremembered street, I'd find the
Speaker 1: closest match and report it for deletion. If it was real,
Speaker 1: it belonged in my mental ledger, complete with utended which
Speaker 1: mail books and how deep the snowblower ruts run come march.
Speaker 1: My route suggestions paradoxical as ever, pointed me in three
Speaker 1: directions at once. One set of driving instructions wanted me
Speaker 1: up by Miller Road after the feed store Perkanny's earler claim,
Speaker 1: another back horser to the town line. I took the
Speaker 1: approach that experience has drilled deep trussed my eyes, not
Speaker 1: the allegedly smart device. There are only so many ways
Speaker 1: for North will Arder too. If you want to avoid
Speaker 1: the dirt track that washes out every spring. I counted
Speaker 1: each lane and spur off the main route, consulting my
Speaker 1: paper maps, and none wore the name. I saw it
Speaker 1: on Miller Road, there was no older lane to be found.
Speaker 1: I spotted the Feet store, long since closed, it painted,
Speaker 1: peeled and its lock colonized by dandelions, and scanned the
Speaker 1: adjacent lanes old stone postmark drivers for a Cumb's o'reiley
Speaker 1: and Timbrook, but nothing for Alder. Trying another angle, I
Speaker 1: parked at the general store. In these towns, the general
Speaker 1: store is equal parts supply cache, social hub, and memory bank.
Speaker 1: The clerk behind the register, a trim woman in a
Speaker 1: red sox hat, offered the kind of customer service reserved
Speaker 1: for locals. I explained my predicament, expecting laughter or at
Speaker 1: least sympathy. Oh, Alder Lane, as past Maple Drive, you
Speaker 1: just take a right once you see the big blue barn,
Speaker 1: can't miss it. She offered the advice of brie usy certainty,
Speaker 1: as if all delane were as tangible, so countertop. I
Speaker 1: thanked her, and what back out curiosity sharpening Maple Drive?
Speaker 1: Was there? True enough? I left off the center green,
Speaker 1: but no blue barn appeared, and no right hand turn
Speaker 1: greeted me, just a half mile of overgrown thicket and
Speaker 1: a lurking sense that my wrote a place book once
Speaker 1: as solid as bedrock, was slouching sideways. I looped back
Speaker 1: through town, trusting the miles in my veins, if not
Speaker 1: the directions in my hands, and realized, with the tickle
Speaker 1: of contradiction, that I had ended up miles away, staring
Speaker 1: at community garden plotted between two street names had never
Speaker 1: seen before, neither of which led to older lane. By
Speaker 1: a lunch time, Mionnees had gradually shifted gears, not fear,
Speaker 1: but something invigorating, as if I discovered the start of
Speaker 1: a puzzle too odd to be menacing. Sometimes you don't
Speaker 1: want comfort, you want the thrill of the missing piece.
Speaker 1: Returning to the depot, slinging empties from the trap bed,
Speaker 1: I received an avalanche of conflicting advice from the other drivers.
Speaker 1: Should have cut through the corn fills, Someone call not
Speaker 1: bothering to clarify, No, you missed it as passomal pond.
Speaker 1: Another opined no. Two suggestions aligned, and none line ended
Speaker 1: up with what I had actually seen on the road.
Speaker 1: That night, I sat at my desk, with the manifest
Speaker 1: a red pen and the slowly sharpening realization that either
Speaker 1: Old Olain was a secret known to all but mere
Speaker 1: notion I found unlikely, or there was some deeper confusion
Speaker 1: running under the surface. Maybe I'd missed a renaming, a
Speaker 1: local joke, or a seasonal short cut out overlooked, but
Speaker 1: the idea it might not really be there at all.
Speaker 1: In a way, streets usually are moved from barely considered
Speaker 1: error to real humming question. Ask all's a note for tomorrow,
Speaker 1: test all known theories. The chase was on Astus asterus asterisk.
Speaker 1: I gave Old Olaine another week of my best efforts.
Speaker 1: Each morning brought a new approach. My TABIS GPS, typically
Speaker 1: grudging second opinion, displayed a fresh route suggestion every day,
Speaker 1: each new path pausable, no unrepeatable. I tried following their prompts,
Speaker 1: just to see if the system might know something I didn't.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it shot me past what should have been Old Elaine,
Speaker 1: then urged me into a driveway labeled private and no outlet.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it feared me through unrelated residential clusters, or spun
Speaker 1: me out on county roads that coiled and did before
Speaker 1: offering me a way back to town. Dispin took over.
Speaker 1: I dug out every map in my collection, spread them
Speaker 1: across the passenger seat, and started overlaying each with delivery
Speaker 1: locks dating back as far as I kept them. I
Speaker 1: marked every pause, but spot of lane could sprout, highlighted
Speaker 1: any marginal track or half remembered old right of way.
Speaker 1: Every time I thought I boxed it in alder lane
Speaker 1: wriggled out. No consistency, no cross reference stronger than rumor.
Speaker 1: Determined not to rely only on my own stubbornness, I
Speaker 1: went to this sours three residents whose addresses placed them
Speaker 1: near every supposed version of older Laine. Missus Udoel, wrapped
Speaker 1: in a Paisley shawl on her porch, smiled as if
Speaker 1: recalling the flavor of a beloved pie. It's right after Stoneybridge. Dear,
Speaker 1: you won't see any houses, just wall Colmbine, the prettiest
Speaker 1: come late, Jean, I thanked her, remembering there hadn't been
Speaker 1: a stony bridge anywhere between the post office and Miller Road,
Speaker 1: let alone Columbine in that tangle of swampy grass. Mister Gustaff,
Speaker 1: the postman, was more forthright, flucking through his own sorting bin.
Speaker 1: Being there a hundred times old white farmhouse left side,
Speaker 1: watched the dark, nice old man somewhat of vane on
Speaker 1: the barn, delivered a package there just last month. I
Speaker 1: wondered if his memory had simply blured together any lamee
Speaker 1: of white farmhouses and ill temper dogs. But if so,
Speaker 1: his conviction was complete. On a hunch, I swung by
Speaker 1: a garage where teens glustered to tinker on their beat
Speaker 1: up Chevy balder Lane the boy in a raider's being,
Speaker 1: he repeated, isn't that behind the bakery lot like towntown?
Speaker 1: When I pressed for more, he shrot could be, or
Speaker 1: maybe that was where my cousin crashed his back. His
Speaker 1: friends board added their own color. Maybe it's the dirt
Speaker 1: road by the stream, or as that Martin's patna. Their
Speaker 1: responses seemed to cancel each other out. Alder Lane grew
Speaker 1: more substantial, more geographically flexible, with every retelling one evening
Speaker 1: that weak determination edged with near obsession. I drove back
Speaker 1: out after must shift with a new paper map. Seeing
Speaker 1: the same town in brand and green roade, my eyes
Speaker 1: nearly missed it. A green and white street sign ald
Speaker 1: O' lane posted at the edge of a dirt for
Speaker 1: Cough Miller Road. I squinted, half suspecting a prancropor shift hallucination.
Speaker 1: The sign looked as fixed and municipal as any in town.
Speaker 1: Pulling over, I took a photo with my phone, circling
Speaker 1: the sign in the battered wooden mail books beside. Satisfied,
Speaker 1: I told myself I could close this case another quirk
Speaker 1: of inconsistent signage. Tomorrow I'd show the others and collect
Speaker 1: my gentle ribbing, but at least put the mystery to rest.
Speaker 1: But when I returned the following morning, armed with the
Speaker 1: photo for proof, there was no sign, no lane with
Speaker 1: a sign post that stood, was only a patch of
Speaker 1: intended sumac and a half buried rock crusted with lichen.
Speaker 1: I checked my phones in which gallery, only to find
Speaker 1: that the shot taken the night before now sure nothing
Speaker 1: more than the shadow line of roads i'd brush, no sign,
Speaker 1: no mail box, nothing. I triple checked the time stamp
Speaker 1: and location. The photo itself had stripped out any evidence
Speaker 1: of what I'd seen. My notes laid out of a
Speaker 1: cheap diner paper napkins, and increasingly dense with question marks
Speaker 1: and exclamations. Now told the story whose contradictions were both
Speaker 1: thrilling and maddening. The houses described by others seemed to
Speaker 1: belong to no one and everyone. The antique dealer noras Antiques,
Speaker 1: a business that, as far as I could investigate, and
Speaker 1: never opened in North Willard. Yet older locals recalled it
Speaker 1: as if they browsed those asals just last year. The others, drivers, clerks,
Speaker 1: neighbors acted as if Old Olaine's existence was obvious but
Speaker 1: never seemed un settled. When it couldn't be found, it
Speaker 1: was as though a moving spot and communal memory kept
Speaker 1: shifting out of reach. Always some were just round the
Speaker 1: next bend. The possibility struck me. Then this wasn't a
Speaker 1: mere mapping error on a monic slip. There was a
Speaker 1: blind spot, a play here, a share of fiction, or
Speaker 1: collectively maintained illusion that no one cared to question. That
Speaker 1: sense of mystery, that pressure of curiosity building behind the
Speaker 1: dam of routine, set the direction for every speer minute
Speaker 1: I had. I wanted to know why Old olaine hovered
Speaker 1: rather than landed, and why no one else found that
Speaker 1: strange asterisk asterisk asterisk. I spent an evening at my desk,
Speaker 1: a place usually reserved for tax wrangling, radio static and
Speaker 1: the half resigned tracking of Appliant's warranties. Up came the
Speaker 1: paper manifests, some so old the carb and copies blurred
Speaker 1: all but the wable's last four digits. I cross checked
Speaker 1: these against the digital logs that started years ago, then
Speaker 1: compared the names and times against notes from recent conversations
Speaker 1: to my grown unease. I found not just one, but
Speaker 1: several records of deliveries to Old Olaine, stretching back several years.
Speaker 1: Tuck neatly among the data for rutz I Genuine, they
Speaker 1: recalled the older manifest included printed stops of twelve olds Elaine,
Speaker 1: a fourteen older Olane, with my own initial scrolled in
Speaker 1: the trick completion boxes. There was even a slip ridden
Speaker 1: in my familiar jagged hand for a late December package
Speaker 1: address too j Morse fourteen older Lane. The meditator in
Speaker 1: the lock had a note as now delay plug by
Speaker 1: three p m. That same day, my memory insisted I'd
Speaker 1: run the east loop only after dodging two jackknife trucks
Speaker 1: near the junction. I would swear I'd never been down
Speaker 1: any Old Olane. I brought the slip to leelat more
Speaker 1: out of Habitan hope. She pored over it on her
Speaker 1: terminal fingers, flicking through log after a log, her bro
Speaker 1: pocket and growing amusement. I found scanned signatures for these here, Eh,
Speaker 1: Douglas and j Most, she said, pointing to too perfect
Speaker 1: Liby scrolls, an elegant print the jennerknines set my teeth
Speaker 1: on edge, Tye Britton names, but the signatures just look practiced,
Speaker 1: as if if old sample sheet in advance. She shrugged,
Speaker 1: passing my slip back. There was something deeply out here.
Speaker 1: Not only did the geography of Old Olane shift depending
Speaker 1: up who recalled it, the documentary trail itself dates times
Speaker 1: bridge as flex to accommodated, not fabricated exactly, but quietly
Speaker 1: were written to pass muster during routine audits my paper, Ricker,
Speaker 1: if trusted, declared that I had performed my duties and
Speaker 1: delivered to Old Olaine on several occasions in the teeth
Speaker 1: of storms and at the height of summer flash floods.
Speaker 1: For the first time, the question changed shape. Maybe Old
Speaker 1: Olaine didn't just elute geography. Maybe you actually insert itself
Speaker 1: into routine, even into my private Handreton notes and collective
Speaker 1: company memory. If that was true, what else could be
Speaker 1: quietly revised by the need for a road or recipient
Speaker 1: as solution to a gap in expectation or story. The
Speaker 1: mystery tilted. It was no longer a matter of just
Speaker 1: finding Old Olaine somewhere out there between streams and Fieldston foundations.
Speaker 1: It was about learning how many versions of Older Olaine
Speaker 1: could exist alongside each other, and whose vision shaped dech iteration.
Speaker 1: The hunt became about memory, how its constructed, stored were written.
Speaker 1: I wondered for the first time if for those beside
Speaker 1: me had ever tried to nail down such a place,
Speaker 1: or if they simply accepted the contradiction as a matter
Speaker 1: of course astoris astoris asterus. I needed outside perspective, someone
Speaker 1: with knowledge older than electric rapp planning, who measured land
Speaker 1: and paces in postmarks. The next afternoon I decided to
Speaker 1: visit the local historical Society. An odd ball archive crowded
Speaker 1: into the town's octagonal brick school house. An air of
Speaker 1: dusty authority hung over it, thick with map drawers and
Speaker 1: surple sculptures, stacks of forgotten grand applications, and feeded town
Speaker 1: chatters if all Doolane ever existed or almost existed, they'd
Speaker 1: have the record, or at least an institutional memory, of
Speaker 1: where it might once have been. Kenny, it turned out,
Speaker 1: was there off duty, elbows deep in the Society's box
Speaker 1: of black and white photographs. Surprised to see me arrive
Speaker 1: on my own time, he gestured me over, handing me
Speaker 1: a mug of watery coffee that might have been bruined
Speaker 1: since the last town's leacktward meeting. He still after that
Speaker 1: lane a he grin, but softer this time, as if
Speaker 1: by someone spoke in agreement. The joke had lost its bark.
Speaker 1: A few of the society's old timers welcomed the diversion
Speaker 1: from cataloging a box of water damage tax receipts. I
Speaker 1: explained my problem as succinctly as possible, worry of disuspecting
Speaker 1: any family tales. The response I got was warmer than
Speaker 1: I'd expected. Oh, old Delane, missus elkins ady three and
Speaker 1: sharp as Rye whiskey said, I remember that well used
Speaker 1: to be duck pond. Write there my sister and I
Speaker 1: caught frogs every June till my mother chased us out.
Speaker 1: There were willows and missus littles daffodils all along the verge,
Speaker 1: birthday parties, Fourth of July lanterns, the works. Another Society member, Reggie,
Speaker 1: offered a different vision, a lane running past a hand
Speaker 1: hewn barn where the limestone jutted up while behind a
Speaker 1: porch wing. When I asked for details where exactly it
Speaker 1: was the slain, the answers tumbled out in a course
Speaker 1: of memory, each account distinct, vivid, but never overlapping. In fact,
Speaker 1: we pulled out faded envelopes from an old correspondence file
Speaker 1: meant for displays on historic will Odd businesses. Several were
Speaker 1: dressed to old Olaine dates spanning the nineteen forties to
Speaker 1: the seventies, each listing a different retain address. Some bore
Speaker 1: stamps from a hardware store that had apparently moved or
Speaker 1: vanished decades prior. The handwriting on the old envelopes was
Speaker 1: neither childish nor deliberately false, but Robustfordinary's goop sent in
Speaker 1: expectation that the road and its house numbers would be
Speaker 1: understood by the intended bussippiine. I asked about official records,
Speaker 1: deeds or tax file. Miss sss Elkins smiled shook her head.
Speaker 1: My nephews checked every book. Dear, no older lane in
Speaker 1: the land records, but everyone knows someone who had a
Speaker 1: reason to find at once. She seemed more delighted by
Speaker 1: the contradiction than troubled. I pressed for recent recollections. Had
Speaker 1: any one spoken of Alder Lane lately? Miss s S.
Speaker 1: Elkins recited a memory so detailed they fell to come alive.
Speaker 1: You know, my friend Mabel, before she passed, said she
Speaker 1: brought soup to someone on Alder Lane. Must have been
Speaker 1: five or six years ago. She thought there was a
Speaker 1: ponder tho or no map agrees. I used to go
Speaker 1: walking alone there as a girl, and I swear there
Speaker 1: was a swing hanging from a beach. My father said.
Speaker 1: The lane ran right through the old occhard before the
Speaker 1: blight took those trees. The images from their recollections didn't
Speaker 1: line up with each other, or with anything I traced
Speaker 1: in the tangible world. The older lane of missus Elkins
Speaker 1: was different from the one in Reggie stories, or from
Speaker 1: the route others described after the blizzard or the spring flood. Still,
Speaker 1: each book with a note of fondness, not confusion, as
Speaker 1: if Alder Lane was simply about rupt to moments of meaning,
Speaker 1: deliveries made, neighbors visited, comfort offered in times of need.
Speaker 1: I shifted my search to the contemporary. On social media.
Speaker 1: I found posts photos tagged all de Olane drop off
Speaker 1: hopee like the Pie or Loftier Medicine in the blue
Speaker 1: mail box on alder. The photos, when I tried to
Speaker 1: match them, were always cheerful but undescript. Boxes on porches,
Speaker 1: a field of wildflorrors, a driveway wash in sunlight. When
Speaker 1: I asked in the comments if some one could say
Speaker 1: which town Old Alane belonged to, there were no responses.
Speaker 1: Only it's just around the bend. Every one knows that
Speaker 1: every story was heartfelt, but imphrecise, an emotional anchor with
Speaker 1: just enough detail to be believed, but not enough to
Speaker 1: be pinto a spot on any map I could lay
Speaker 1: my hands on, vivid in memory nowhere. In fact, it
Speaker 1: wasn't just my own sense of geography that had failed.
Speaker 1: It was as if the lane existed only at the
Speaker 1: blurry edge between story and need. That day, I sat
Speaker 1: in my truck, window down, wrestling not with frustration but
Speaker 1: an odd, giddy sense of perspective. If old Olaine existed
Speaker 1: at all. It existed as a network of recollections, a
Speaker 1: possibility space like some towns people described a church picnic
Speaker 1: or the return of bluebirds in spring, Always do, never certain.
Speaker 1: I turned the questions over, shifting from the word to though.
Speaker 1: Why in a place where distances are measured by stories,
Speaker 1: why did Olderlaine remain so tenacious, so common in every
Speaker 1: one's experience, yet scattershot and unvexed? In fact? Had every
Speaker 1: one simply made a misake? Wred that such places spring
Speaker 1: up to meet needs? No plotted subdivision could That marked
Speaker 1: the axis of my curiosity until now. I tried to
Speaker 1: solve a practical mapping error, or to explain away a
Speaker 1: community's oversight. But Alder Lane wasn't just an error or oversight.
Speaker 1: It was a live reality, in memory, in daily expectation,
Speaker 1: an address he responded to whenever some one needed a
Speaker 1: neighbor at the friend or a delivery to ane in
Speaker 1: between plays. Maybe a community needed such a lane, a
Speaker 1: kind of always accessible reach for connection. I built an
Speaker 1: answer for unstated longings. I sat behind my steering wheel,
Speaker 1: a stack of contradictory notes on the seat beside me,
Speaker 1: and considered something new. Older Lane didn't exist because it
Speaker 1: had to geographically. It existed because the community, through habit
Speaker 1: and kindness, had rehearsed it into being shaped by need
Speaker 1: or made in each retelling, honored not through coordinates, but
Speaker 1: through the quiet work of showing up wherever one is
Speaker 1: most needed. I smiled tappy, my manifest, with its circle
Speaker 1: question mark, now less a cause for exasperation and assigned
Speaker 1: was too much deep a puzzle. Alder Lane wasn't a
Speaker 1: place to be found, it was a place to be
Speaker 1: remembered or to be made. I drove home that evening
Speaker 1: feeling as if I'd spent the day pacing the threshold
Speaker 1: between two realities. There was the territory I knew, its
Speaker 1: ditches and dolblicks, the familiar rise and fall of the
Speaker 1: roads in my bones, and this other vibrating possibility, the
Speaker 1: place between memories kept open by need. I thought I'd
Speaker 1: reached the edge of the map at last, But now
Speaker 1: it seemed the map kepturey, drawing itself, its garsely force
Speaker 1: filled him by the commune hand. I slept restlessly, waking
Speaker 1: before sunrise, mind spiraling not with frustration but with a
Speaker 1: low key excitement. I found myself running through the names
Speaker 1: I'd heard in stories, Old Missus, Little Mabel with their soup,
Speaker 1: the unknown recipients, the boys at the garage, and trying
Speaker 1: to picture whether any two had meant the same lane
Speaker 1: at all. It no longer felt important to fix Old
Speaker 1: Olaine's direction in space. What mattered now is why I
Speaker 1: foundhim A dress would persist, so stubbornly, rising up wherever
Speaker 1: there was a need for it. I arrived early at
Speaker 1: the depot, before even Penny's first cup of coffee could
Speaker 1: take the edge off her Monday mood. The place was
Speaker 1: shuddering into gear of oil and burnt toast, the distant
Speaker 1: husher of a diesel engine turning over. I poured myself
Speaker 1: a weak cup and scanned the manifest with fresh eyes,
Speaker 1: less vested in pinning Old Olain down, more interested in
Speaker 1: what a gesture toward to day. There it was again,
Speaker 1: twelve Old o'lane, square in the middle, sandwiched between two
Speaker 1: perfectly ordinary stops. Penny, tiredly brushing crumbsof o Lockbrook, didn't
Speaker 1: even look up when I approached. Someone always needs something
Speaker 1: from Old o Lane, she murmured, almost to herself as
Speaker 1: I pointed it out, Even if we don't know what
Speaker 1: it is until the last minute. She glanced up then
Speaker 1: her expression neither mystical nor amuse, just quietly practical, as
Speaker 1: if this floating address was part of the rhythm, just
Speaker 1: another variant to be managed along with rin skulls and
Speaker 1: engine trouble. Half my files are held together by dresses
Speaker 1: like that, she added. Matter of fact, I lingered at
Speaker 1: her desk a little longer. Did anyone ever complain about
Speaker 1: not finding it? I asked? She shook her head. Nope,
Speaker 1: packages get there, and if they don't, well, the right
Speaker 1: person always calls before we close for the day. You'd
Speaker 1: be surprised how many folks remember the lame when they
Speaker 1: need to. I think to jotting a note to myself,
Speaker 1: not too Saul, but to observe. Instead of setting out immediately,
Speaker 1: I sat in the calve, scrolling back through months of
Speaker 1: delivery entries on the company tablet. I feltered every log,
Speaker 1: tagged all Doolane cross referencing the type of package recipient,
Speaker 1: when listed, time of year, any common in the notes field.
Speaker 1: Something new became visible, not much in the way of
Speaker 1: electronics or large parcels, almost never commercial deliveries. Instead, what
Speaker 1: recurred was the small and personal letters, home, big food, medicine,
Speaker 1: repair parts for things nobody else serviced. Some stops just
Speaker 1: read in a revergent or cryptically for the party or
Speaker 1: apology direct handerff. I leaned back. The bulk of my
Speaker 1: own life's routine suddenly lined up. Beside these enigmatic drop offs.
Speaker 1: Here was a network of need and kindness not easily mapped.
Speaker 1: I began to wonder if old Olaine was less of
Speaker 1: an error and more of an informal postal patch and
Speaker 1: invention the community had made to bridge gaps that ordinary
Speaker 1: wraps and addresses couldn't. Driven by the sense that every
Speaker 1: surface hit a layer I hadn't noticed, I revised my
Speaker 1: route for the morning, looping back by as many of
Speaker 1: the adjacent road as I could without throwing off my
Speaker 1: whole day. This time, I didn't search for a named
Speaker 1: lane or expect the world to fall into practical order. Instead,
Speaker 1: in each location I visited, I looked for traces of
Speaker 1: prisons of transision of care. At the town, a place
Speaker 1: which one resident had described as almost next to older lane,
Speaker 1: I noticed a freshly turned head, a corner of garden
Speaker 1: recently cleared, as if some one was preparing for company
Speaker 1: on another block, beside an old swing set, a refurbished
Speaker 1: mail butxpoor numbers pinted over and nearer, darker brush struck
Speaker 1: signs that something of someone here was regularly expected, even
Speaker 1: if the address kept changing. In every place, a pasted
Speaker 1: a street corner, a front porch, and a plowed field edge,
Speaker 1: I caught glimpses of gentle disruption and renewal. A new
Speaker 1: set of tulips, half faded shalks ons on a driveway,
Speaker 1: a lemon pound cake cooling on a side table behind
Speaker 1: a screen door. They weren't signposts to a missing lane.
Speaker 1: They were evidence that, for someone somewhere, the need for
Speaker 1: older lane had been answered. At my lunch stop, I
Speaker 1: pulled out my planner. Reviewing every conversation and every story
Speaker 1: I had gathered, I no longer felt the urge to
Speaker 1: a mask older lane. The better question was when would
Speaker 1: I recognize its arrival and could I, at this time
Speaker 1: enter into what it was offering. Back at the depot,
Speaker 1: just before check in, I received a ping from the
Speaker 1: routing system. The day's list had been quietly revised. A
Speaker 1: new delivery twelve older lane recipient neighbor the routed map
Speaker 1: was neither of the options from days past, nor a
Speaker 1: predictable variation. It cut through a concatenation of corners and
Speaker 1: right angles, some familiar, some that shouldn't logically connect, but
Speaker 1: which on that day perhaps did. I studied the map
Speaker 1: wherever I'd expected a dead end or a barrier, a
Speaker 1: road knulling through. Not merely a computer error, at least
Speaker 1: not the kind had seen before, but a rap patch
Speaker 1: together with the same improvisational logic as those stories at
Speaker 1: the Historical Society. My own screen and mental man converged,
Speaker 1: neither confirming nor denying each other, but inviting me to
Speaker 1: try this new arrangement. I collected the package, a small
Speaker 1: soft side, a parcel the kind that might contain a
Speaker 1: scarf for carefully wrap preserves, bearing only the name neighbor,
Speaker 1: in a precise set of handling instructions. I felt strangely honored,
Speaker 1: as if in trusted with the task larger than the
Speaker 1: miles themselves. I drove with a feeling i'd last known
Speaker 1: as a child, setting out for a friend, house, fire,
Speaker 1: or short cut. I was sure I'd invented. The row
Speaker 1: carried me not in circles, but long a meandering composite path,
Speaker 1: as if laid from every memory, direction and description. I'd
Speaker 1: collected a bend that resembled the one in Miss s
Speaker 1: s Elkins's tails, slight falling through the willows, like the
Speaker 1: stories of the duck pond, the mail book shape from
Speaker 1: Reggie's recollection. In each segment of road, something looked fractionally familiar,
Speaker 1: drawn from a conversation, a rumor, a nearly forgotten delivery.
Speaker 1: Then a lane, modest and dusty, no longer shy or invisible,
Speaker 1: but neither emblazoned on a formal grid. It bore a
Speaker 1: signed folder, lyne in the precess script and hue of
Speaker 1: local authority. Yet the back of the sign was unweathered,
Speaker 1: its post still crisp and straight. The lane was neither
Speaker 1: long nor short, and the houses ranged up into small
Speaker 1: white house with an assuming porch swing a red shingled roof.
Speaker 1: Daffod was crowding along a border. The place looked at
Speaker 1: once ordinary and subtly uncrackable, comprised of the artifacts of
Speaker 1: every votion I had heard, now, all present but never
Speaker 1: quite overlapping. The uncanny waranted it and settled me, and
Speaker 1: made me feel as if perhaps I'd always be meant
Speaker 1: to arrive. A woman, hair silver and clipped back, stood
Speaker 1: at the end of the drive, retrieving what must have
Speaker 1: been male. She looked up as I parked, gave a
Speaker 1: gentle wave, and smiled the way you do to some
Speaker 1: one whose face dwells just at the age of memory.
Speaker 1: A boy six or seven darted across the path, kicking
Speaker 1: a blue ball, glancing at me only briefly before darting
Speaker 1: into a patch of violets by the hedgerow. Good morning,
Speaker 1: the woman said. As I approached, package in hand, I
Speaker 1: found myself stammering, uncharacteristically uncertain. Is this for here? I
Speaker 1: have a delivery to a neighbor, she beamed. I am
Speaker 1: sure it is. Thank you for bringing it. She reached
Speaker 1: for the parcel hand, steady, voice ringing with gentle certainty.
Speaker 1: We seem to have been waiting for this. Thank you
Speaker 1: for always remembering us. I has hated, unsure if I
Speaker 1: ought to ask which number or whose name belonged here,
Speaker 1: but the simplicity of her statement resounded as truth, Overtaking
Speaker 1: all my planning, I surrendered the parcel. The moment stretched
Speaker 1: out splended both newly ordinary and lightly magical. For an
Speaker 1: instant I was aware of both the impossible ability and
Speaker 1: the naturalness of the event. My presence here a package,
Speaker 1: the lane assembled from so many recollections, the sense of
Speaker 1: being wanted, needed, welcomed. She offered another warm thank you, Jack,
Speaker 1: isn't it? I nodded, uncertain how she knew. But as
Speaker 1: quickly as the lane had appeared, the moment faded, not
Speaker 1: in a vanishing, but as if dreamages had been allowed
Speaker 1: simply to soften. I turned back to my truck, feeling
Speaker 1: the oddest mix of completion and gentle bewilderment. The lane,
Speaker 1: the house, the sign. When I glanced in the mirror,
Speaker 1: all persisted behind me, receding into sunlight and rhodust. By
Speaker 1: the time I reached the main junction, Old Olaine was
Speaker 1: again absent from my GPS, the sign and its memory
Speaker 1: tucked away out of reach, but not erased. I could
Speaker 1: no longer see it behind me, but it sat somehow
Speaker 1: more real in mind. Em afore driving home, the meaning
Speaker 1: of the day rearranged itself quietly in my thoughts. I
Speaker 1: considered every person who described Old Olain to me in
Speaker 1: their own fashion, every story of piousup or needed word
Speaker 1: that had anonymously found its weight, or friend or a stranger.
Speaker 1: I saw for the first time that Elaine was in
Speaker 1: single act of forgetfulness, nor a trick, nor a fiction.
Speaker 1: It was an act of communal improvisation, a road that
Speaker 1: appeared wherever the space between people call for connection, for
Speaker 1: the message to be delivered, for need to be acknowledged.
Speaker 1: What looked like a glitchen system, the uncanny address was
Speaker 1: actually its lifeline. Geography are realized was not only a
Speaker 1: matter of lines and numbers. It could also be an
Speaker 1: ongoing negotiation between the stories people told and the boundaries
Speaker 1: they quietly dissolved for each other. Older lane was not imaginary,
Speaker 1: but adaptive, as real as the needed answered, as solid
Speaker 1: as the acts of kindness, for pology or assuring it
Speaker 1: enabled the company's records when corrupt for fraudulent. They were evolving,
Speaker 1: accommodating the essential slippage between aped certainty and lived ambiguity.
Speaker 1: Community memory, just as powerfully held to base for routes
Speaker 1: and recipients that logic alone could never satisfy. People needed
Speaker 1: Elaine for what wouldn't fit elsewhere. A home cooked meal
Speaker 1: for someone reclusive, a note of forgiveness slid into a
Speaker 1: mail which no one would ever officially claim, a free,
Speaker 1: floating invitation to charity or care. The central mystery, the
Speaker 1: riddle that had so stubbornly refused simple explanation, gave way
Speaker 1: to fuller, more generous understanding. Older Lane is what happens
Speaker 1: when the gap between what is needed and what as
Speaker 1: mup grows wide enough and the community and consciously opens
Speaker 1: the door, allowing the route to exist for as long
Speaker 1: as someone needs to travel it. It is a collectively
Speaker 1: sustained fiction, practical in effect, emotional in origin, more true
Speaker 1: for having never been fixed in as foot and signposts routines,
Speaker 1: I realized went just for efficiency. They were vessels for meaning,
Speaker 1: and sometimes, when the ground between these got soft, the
Speaker 1: rud itself became the answer. My job, always a little solitary,
Speaker 1: but now reframed, wasn't just to deliver parcels. It was
Speaker 1: to take part in the slow weaving, a maintenance of
Speaker 1: those invisible, for its maintaining the illusion, the story, the possibility,
Speaker 1: when and where it was required. I let the thoughts
Speaker 1: sit not as a failing of logic, but as a
Speaker 1: gift of perspective. Some questions, once chase far enough, can
Speaker 1: be answered only by changing their shape, in the same
Speaker 1: way that roads change with the seasons, ruts deepening, streams, rising,
Speaker 1: bridges out or returned to so or too do the
Speaker 1: needs that bind us to one another. That afternoon, close
Speaker 1: in my route, I no longer felt the prickly anxiety
Speaker 1: of an unsolvable puzzle. Alder Lane had given me, in
Speaker 1: the end, not so, but an invitation to honor the
Speaker 1: parts of life that refuse neat mapping, to watch for
Speaker 1: where the boundary soften and the world shifts quietly in
Speaker 1: accordance with need. As I handed in my completed manifest,
Speaker 1: Penny glanced at it but didn't comment, simply checking the
Speaker 1: boxes as if nothing had changed. But I met her
Speaker 1: eye for a moment, and I think she understood what
Speaker 1: had happened in not with surprise, but with a subtle
Speaker 1: nod of approval, a shared acknowledgment that some things are
Speaker 1: best left quietly flexible. Driving home had caught my own
Speaker 1: reflection in the side window, then looked away to the
Speaker 1: winding road ahead. My certainty in the map had not
Speaker 1: exactly returned, but I found in its place something else,
Speaker 1: a sense of kinship with every anonymous neighbor, every driver,
Speaker 1: every person whose memory held a home not quite found
Speaker 1: but never quite forgotten. And as the fields blurred by
Speaker 1: under a lowering sky, I found it quietly reassuring that
Speaker 1: not all roads need be found the same way twice.
Speaker 1: In a world that Honda's for algorithmic surity, perhaps we
Speaker 1: still require these never quite map ruts. These lane ship
Speaker 1: by expectation and kindness, may reel when someone is willing
Speaker 1: to look for them, and Chancy the call, however uncertain,
Speaker 1: It occurs to me that ald Olane is never lost.
Speaker 1: It appears each time right where it's needed, joining my
Speaker 1: place to heartfelt story for just as long as some
Speaker 1: one is willing to travel the distance between, and that
Speaker 1: is the end. Thank you for listening, and I will
Speaker 1: see you in the next one.