Monday, October 06, 2003

I happened to walk past an oil delivery truck this morning and it reminded me that this is definitely one of the things I don't miss about living in Manhattan. In my old building anyway. The brownstones across the street and the building next door had oil heat and it seemed like one of these trucks was pulling up in the early morning a few times a week in the Fall, Winter and Spring. First you would hear that deep, diesel rumble and then the air breaks. I would lie in bed with a pillow over my head muttering, 'oh, no, dear god, don't let it be another oil delivery'. The next thing to be heard was the metal-on-metal banging as the service man opened the receptacle on the street. And then the truck would sit there, idling loudly for at least a half an hour, long enough that any thought of further sleep was long gone. If the delivery happened to come a little later (say at 8 AM, rather than 5 or 6), I would have to turn my TV up so that the Today show could be heard over the rumble and rattle. Nope, I do not miss that at all.

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