Powhite Parkway

In Richmond, right off Interstate 95, is an exit for a road with a name I usually mispronounce. On purpose. I've been to Richmond many times. But I've never taken that exit.

I used to work for a company with one office here in Alexandria and another in our state capitol: Richmond, Virginia. The job required me to travel there every so often. The 1.5 hour trip of pure highway driving followed by a jaunt through inner city blight would find me turning into the honor parking lot just off Richmond's main drag, Broad Street.

Now maybe where you are from, honor parking lots are common. Where I am from, they are not. Where I am from, parkers are not given the option of being honorable. Honor parking lots have a large bank of boxes which resemble the cluster mailboxes in suburban apartment parking lots. Each box corresponds with a numbered parking spot and has a slot. The parker is honored by the opportunity to drop the posted amount of dollars per spot per hour in the slot that corresponds with number of the space in which one's vehicle is parked.

Where I am from, parking lots in the city require a deposit of your ignition key. Your auto is then whisked away out of sight down a dark concrete maze of tunnels. When you return, you must fork over an exhorbitant amount of dollars before your vehicle is retrieved from the mysterious concrete depths.

Several blocks up Broad Street from our Richmond office, the Rehabilitation of Richmond was underway. The grand old city was (is!) getting a face lift! Looking good, looking good. But down where our office was... well... the rehab hadn't made it that far up Broad Street yet. So the honor parking lot was in the shadow of a building with boarded-up windows and graffiti on the old brick facade.

So back to this exit. The one to the road with the name I intentionally mispronouce. Powhite Parkway. The actual pronunciation is 'pow height'. But because it makes me giggle and because the parts of Richmond with which I am most familiar make it feel appropriate, I say 'po white'. As in 'poor white' with a southern cracker accent. Oh never mind, you understood that. Maybe it's only funny if one has driven through the inner city blight on the way to the more civilized sections of town. Maybe it's only funny if you're me?