Expressway

Remember those radio ads in the 1980s that warned motorists about construction along the Jones Falls Expressway?RTC After the announcer gave his friendly warning, they always featured some guy cursing the backups. "The JFX?!!" he would always mutter.Well, four years after the $160 million face lift was completed, it may be time to put the ?!! part back alongside the JFX.Baltimore's most popular commuter artery is getting some more treatment. It won't be as bad as the last time. Call it a nose job, a chin tuck -- or maybe "bridge work" would be more appropriate.

A MUSCULAR WIND kicked open the back door yesterday. It was a brisk reminder that the seasonal clock is ticking. The sunlight is getting thinner, the nights sharper as autumn with its list of annual chores settles in. Even the leaves are restless. Three big ones, oak leaves I think, chased me along the Jones Falls Expressway the other day. They shot out from a Druid Hill Park grove that overlooks the expressway near 28th Street. They hovered in the afternoon air and seemed to seek my car out, like banshees swooping down on a passing horseman, running right at my windshield before diving down toward Remington.

I telephone Les Waas on Friday and leave word that I have a very pressing newspaper deadline, so naturally he does not call back until the deadline has passed."

What Baltimore's Highway to Nowhere has torn asunder, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke wants to put together again.Three decades ago, the city government cut through the heart of stable black neighborhoods in West Baltimore to build a $101 million expressway that ends abruptly after all of 1.36 miles.Now, the Schmoke administration is advancing a radical idea of redress: Tear down part or all of the road and rebuild some of the hundreds of houses and businesses that were destroyed in the name of progress.

MY mother-in-law Rose Ellen lives across the street. At 90, she says, "it isn't any fun growing old," but she does it with grace and on her own terms.In another era, she waited at the door to welcome our four children home from school, staying until we returned from work. Today, she walks to the grocery store almost every day.A week ago, we took Rose Ellen with us to the Eastern Shore to see a house where all of us might settle on a crest of lawn above the Miles River. Unstated were images of tethered sails and future grandkids visiting on holiday.

THE familiar TGIF becomes GFIF (God forbid it's Friday) if your car chooses late Friday afternoon to break down on an expressway -- when sensible tow truck operators are --ing off for well-earned R&R after toiling through a week of oppressive heat.It was 4:45 on a steamy Friday afternoon. I was in the middle of bumper-to-bumper congestion on the Beltway, but I wasn't too anxious. There was still plenty of time to get home to dinner.Growing impatience was soothed by radio chatter and cooled by blessed air conditioning.

Go west on Franklin Street. Late on a winter afternoon. To yourleft runs the U.S. 40 expressway -- a barren concrete strip going nowhere.Turn north on Carey. Or Calhoun. Or Gilmor. Three-story row houses. Many of them empty. Plywood sheets nailed across the doors and windows. Block after block.Evening falls. The sky blackens. Abandoned buildings loom. The sidewalks change color. Cold. Gray. Grim.Men in dark coats or jackets stand on corners. In front of barricaded liquor stores. One man, at first.

The Baltimore City Department of Transportation has posted road closures and traffic modifications for Saturday's 138th running of the Preakness Stakes and InfieldFest at Pimlico Race Course . DOT says Saturday from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., the southbound Jones Falls Expressway exit ramp to eastbound Northern Parkway will be closed, and motorists will be redirected to the Cold Spring Lane exits. Cylburn Avenue from Northern Parkway to Greenspring Avenue will also be closed at that time, DOT said.

When I read a recent survey that rated Baltimore and Washington among the nation's top five cities for road rage, I thought back to a driving incident about 10 years ago. While visiting D.C. from my home in Boston, I triggered the angst of an officer who pulled me over on New York Avenue. "Did you know that you ran that yellow light back there?" the policewoman scolded while inspecting my Massachusetts driver's license. I sat momentarily stunned, my mouth wide open. Did she say yellow light?

Toward the end of their concert in Philadelphia this month, First Aid Kit addressed the crowd: "We want to try an experiment. " For the past hour, Klara and Johanna Soderberg, the two Swedish sisters who make up the band, had been performing the kind of music that can be best summed up with the word "lovely. " It is Americana by way of Stockholm, pretty ballads and melancholy anecdotes sung in two frail, harmonious voices over quivering basslines. The duo was playing Union Transfer, a cavernous former rail baggage depot and my second stop on a visit to Philly's abundantly rich music scene.