The whole purpose was to avoid the Parkway South on a summer Saturday.
Leaving the party in Cliffwood, I turned onto Laurel Ave. from route 35. Passing Middletown, which isn't exactly visible from the road, I mentioned to my young passengers that I used to work there. Heh, the idea of Mommy ever working seemed fantastic to me too!
Then I thought to myself, "Let's make this real" and I turned down Crawfords Corner Road. I had the guts to pull into the long driveway, 'though my conscience felt a twinge of distress at the prospect of trespassing.
I found pleasure in the straightness of a line of parking lot lights, on the diagonal. I waited for the geese to pass. And we sat for a minute or two between the two ponds, between the great water tower and the humongous building. Even Tim acknowledged that the building was very big.
It's been eight years since I've been inside. God knows what Lucent did to the interior. When I left, they were knocking down office walls and putting up cubes everywhere, even in the service dining room! Imagine!
But I remember the pleasant sound of the flagstone in the atrium under my low heels as I shuffled along, signing in visitors. I remember watching summer storms roll in from the sixth floor through the wall of windows. And, in the mornings, walking past the library on a floor above, to see men asleep on their newspapers in the privacy of the reading carrels.
Good times, mostly good times.
"Developer to raze Bell Labs Holmdel facility, birthplace of the cellphone", Engadget, 7/5/06
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