It’s dark now and we’re still hours from home. I-80 is a long sweep of asphalt stretching from Ohio to New York; a cross-state truck route offering us little more than the sound of downshifting tractor-trailers and the hum of our own engine as it barrels forward, our newly purchased tiny house in tow.
Our adrenaline has subsided some after having spent the first part of this leg instinctively ducking in our seats, shoulders hunched up, whenever we approached an overpass. We still haven’t gained full confidence that we are going to clear them with each approach despite measuring the house at a gas station before we cut ties with Pittsburgh. The worn-out stick, a huge ruler really, was a clear clap-back at technology. The house measured 13.1 feet from top to bottom and the internet confirmed that the overpasses on the roads we were traveling were 13.3 feet. Yet, we both agreed there was a good chance that we were going to wind up on the eleven o’clock news, a couple of snowflakes from New York who got their tiny house stuck under a highway overpass and had to be rescued by men and women less stupid than us, a hefty fine and universal mockery our penance.
"I don't think this thing is going to fit up Glengary." Dave said. We were watching the Final Four on my laptop when he offered up this non sequitur. Glengary, of course, being the road Dave lives on and where we had planned to keep the tiny house while we waited for our lease with Sundial Farm to be finalized. At issue, Dave believes, are a couple of low-hanging wires that stretch across his street, a tucked-away jaunt up a windy stretch of road in Croton’s northernmost point.
I was immediately flummoxed. Foiled by a couple of telephone wires? Malarky! But it was true. I had seen the wires in question and while I previously brushed it off – after all, FedEx trucks delivered up there all the time –now having set eyes on our tiny house and having given it a proper measure, I was also convinced. The house is a squat semi, too tall to fit under any lower hanging objects.
Our current circumstances are now clear, and we both agree that we have only two legitimate options. Either find a spot to temporarily park our tiny house or unhitch it and set it aflame at the nearest park and ride. The former and most pragmatic response didn’t leave us with a ton of great alternatives. Many of our friends in town lived in homes like mine – houses built close together with one car driveways in dense, residential neighborhoods, or in the sticks like Dave where the roads were narrow, had impossibly tight turnarounds, and wires and tree branches that hung low. It wasn’t long before we settled on one couple, mutual friends, who were about to wish they never went movin’ on up to Georgia Lane.
Simon
It’s Jeff and Dave… They want to park their tiny house in our driveway.” Simon shouts.
Jennie (O.S.)
What?
They both laugh. (Blackout and end of Act I.)
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