Dear Mercury Rising,

Mr. or Ms. Malatesta in his/her "Stay on 2 Wheels" article (November, 1991) doesn't seem to grasp the importance of the automobile to the state of well-being of the populace.

Late each day I leave the room filled with petty gossip ­ past the dustbins and gravy-flecked ties. Before I know it, it is time to get into my car. On silver wings I float to my parking spot and then I am there. In my car, I am flooded with unexpected silence in which I can reminisce. Or, better, I can increase the volume of the stereo until I drive out all thought, agony or discrimination. We must all have a life with which we can live. Our cars help us with that. God bless my car. If anyone should venture to take my car from me, I would shoot him or (perhaps more appropriately) run him down.

My car is the only place where I am sure I will be alone and undistrubed. It is not just a vehicle. It is a personal resort.

Sometimes I feel I pay for this resort. No, my life with my car is not all easy. Traffic jams are one example, traffic jams when I am late for an appointment and my veins are flooded with pounding force. Or hot summer days on which the bucket seats cause my buttocks to sweat. Or at the gas station where my taxes have been raised once again by people who believe even my right to drive should be taxed.

Sometimes this irks me so much that I feel moved to immediately call my congresswoman, right there in my car. She usually pretends she isn't there.

Sincerely,
Josephine Flinch Buick

Turmoil at Express

Express Messenger Systems is, believe it or not, hiring. But a words of advice: those prone to fits of angst should apply elsewhere. Life at Express is uncertain these days.

When the company assigned one dispatcher (thankfully, one who has risen to the challenge) to both the walker and the biker boards, it looked like times might be a bit more chaotic than usual ­ but hopefully only "temporarily." When, two weeks ago, they laid off half of the walkers and gave every indication that the dispatch situation was going to be permanent, things started looking a bit more grim. But now Express has lost the lease for the downtown office, and so is working out of a van; the walkers have been put on commission so that the company can save on their already meager salary; the office is so short-handed that the dispatcher has to do his own trouble-shooting; and the bikers have averaged well under the minimum wage for over a month now because Express has lost so many clients. And all of this is compounded by the fact that the bikers are not paid for a good portion of the tags they do ­ thanks partially to a lack of management personnel ­ there is no one to look at the correction sheets, so they sit in the office and molder.

While Express decides whether it can or will remain afloat, the consolation is that, since they lost the scooter insurance, there have been plenty of good long rides.

­Hank N. Tight