A Thanksgiving Ritual.(Column)(Evil Rock, Massachusetts)(Column)

Byline: Richard S. Chang

Evil Rock is the name we gave a landmark in my hometown, Lexington, Massachusetts. The block of granite juts out of an embankment on a narrow winding road that connects Lexington to Bedford. It has sharp Cubist edges like a chipped fist of coal. It is bronze in color and looks like it was trapped mid-flight from the gates of Hades.

The name is fact.

It reaches out to Bedford-bound traffic on Grove Street like an iron claw. In high school I constantly imagined the worst, what would have happened had I drifted too close to the road's edge and E.R. grabbed at my family's Firenze wagon (another story), scraping the wood-grain-imprinted paneling.

Like all evil things, E.R.'s menace is most evident after dark, when it falls on the same planar field as the average car's headlight. The street turns left as you approach, so the beams brush the landscape in a dramatic fashion, like a police spotlight. Tree, tree, tree, driveway, tree, tree, embankment, Evil Rock. Gasp. It doesn't matter how many times I drive down the Grove, it always catches me by surprise.

But still, I am looking forward to hitting Grove when I visit my parents for Thanksgiving. It's a ritual. Even if I'm there for a weekend, I'll drive it at least once. There aren't any stretches of exciting driving in Lexington, so Grove into Bedford is about as good as it gets.

Empirically speaking, it's nothing special. Meandering and New Englandular, it's neither very straight nor curvy. It is flanked on both sides by suburbia and trees that turn bare in the fall, making Grove look sad and rusty.