New York Minute 162 - Caravan

A few weeks ago, I was crossing Broadway at Canal Street on a Sunday. It’s a busy intersection, and it’s particularly chaotic on weekends when people sell a variety of items on the sidewalk.

One cautionary note about this intersection is that the traffic on Canal Street gets a green arrow for left turns when the lights change. Pedestrians need to wait for their own walk signal rather than moving automatically with the traffic. Unfortunately, a young lady who was engrossed in whatever was playing on her phone didn’t pay attention to the walk sign stepped into the intersection and came close to being struck by a UPS truck that was making a left turn.

The lady was okay. She hadn’t wandered far enough into the intersection to be injured (she would have been in danger if she had taken one more step). When I was no longer concerned for her welfare, I noticed some strange details about this situation.

First of all, it was a Sunday. UPS doesn’t deliver on Sundays. 

Secondly, the driver had made a left turn. UPS famously plans their routes to avoid left turns whoever possible. The driver could have gone around the block if he had wanted to adhere to the company’s right-turns-only rule.

Now, here’s the really strange bit. It wasn’t just one truck. At least eight and maybe as many as ten UPS trucks all made the same left turn from Canal Street onto Broadway, one after another in a big brown caravan. They just kept coming, forcing their way through the intersections long after the left turn arrow had switched to red. That wasn’t an issue, because the next thing that I notice was that they had a police escort. Several marked NYPD cars followed the UPS trucks through the intersection.

Once all of the trucks and police cars turned off of Canal Street onto Broadway, pedestrians were finally able to cross the street. It was then that I noticed yet another mysterious detail. The trucks were numbered, and I’m not talking about black serial numbers in the paint job. On the back of each truck was tabled single sheet of white, letter-sized paper. Each sheet had been labeled by hand with a pen.

TRUCK 3

TRUCK 2

TRUCK 1

The last truck in the sequence was TRUCK 0.

So, here it was, a Sunday, and a police-escorted caravan of UPS trucks has just pushed its way through a major intersection making the left turn that UPS trucks famously never make. My mind searched for an explanation. 

At first, I wondered whether the drivers were taking part in a labor protest. But it didn’t make sense that they were being escorted by multiple police cars. 

Next, I considered that they might be involved in a stunt scene for a movie. But there were no production people in sight, nor were there any cameras or lighting equipment.

Finally, it dawned on me that the caravan was heading in the direction of the courthouses and the federal buildings. That’s when one final idea popped into my head. Were these UPS trucks carrying the president’s tax returns?

Copyright © 2019 Daniel R. South 

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