Luckily, I had a full tank of gas.

About 1000 idling cars sat mired on route 133 where it passes the Metronorth station, nobody moving at all. I pulled an illegal U turn, and skedaddled south on route 117, until hitting a total roadblock there, too. Now it was 5:30. By about 6:15 I made it to the stoplights on 9A at Briarcliff, and joined the solid wall of stopped cars going slowly north on 9A.

The country is gone.

There is no Westchester County, as you and I imagine it, or remember it.

In its place, there is a kind of “Wealth Ghetto” stretching from Hopewell Junction, south to the Bronx border, a rich man’s prison where yearly house taxes equal or surpass a lifetime’s earnings in Africa, (or in our father’s day).

No travel at all is possible there, between 6 AM and 10 AM and again between 3 PM and 7 PM. To fit in , one’s home must exceed 4000 square feet. One’s income must exceed $200,000 per annum, to fit the new norm.

Taxation is now based on this new norm, as are all incidental fees. Recent articles have complained about having to give 12 year old teenies $300 bucks to go to a concert, but $300 bucks is just the initiation fee.

In the new Westchester, you are going to live trapped in your palatial, useless house, taxed until you squeak, not in control of your kids, and basically told what to do by your Mexican gardener, who knows how to get all the good under-the-table deals.

For this we fought World War II ?????