This week, my car has been on the “fritz.” (I’m reminded of a not-so-nice campaign slogan used again the late Sen. Mondale.) As my income is on automatic deposit, so is my AAA Plus renewal on automatic withdrawal (something necessary when your car is 24 years old).

After being towed about a half-mile to where I regularly have my car worked on (more regular as time goes by), I walked that half-mile or so back home.

Not a workday, I didn’t have to worry, but the science museum where I work is only a little over a half-mile away.

Some communities are now designed “pedestrian-oriented” this way.

That evening, I had a taste for a beer, so I suddenly remembered (beer-inspired memory) that Walgreens, about a half-mile away, also sold beer. Things have certainly changed since when my father and I would stop by the pharmacy across from Rowan Memorial in the late 1950s and early ’60s. I don’t remember beer being sold there, but I wasn’t really looking for it then. (I was a little precocious, although not that much.) Instead, I was seeking the wonderful chocolate milkshakes served there.

The next day, I was “on the clock” at the science museum, so I walked to work, the distance being perhaps a “half-mile plus.” I soon realized that by not being confined to asphalt roadway, I could sort of go “as the crow flies” (quasi-crow, minus wings). Some of my previous, motored, “right angles,” became more “obtuse” with walking.

I thought of “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn” (1982), where Captain Kirk realizes that Kahn, a man from several centuries back, was thinking two-dimensionally instead of three. By altering my course to reflect being on two feet instead of four wheels, I was being more like Captain Kirk than Kahn (but hopefully, not like “Shatner”).

That day was more normal for December: chilly, windy, with overcast sky. Knowing I would be in the “elements” for that journey (25 minutes worth of them), I wore a topcoat and furry Russian ushanka hat. Walking past church spires (Danville is called “The city of churches” due to their Main Street concentration), I suddenly thought of St. Basil’s Cathedral in Red Square, since I looked “dressed for the occasion.”

In long coat and Russian hat, being without car, and walking beneath a gray sky which precipitated fine mist, I recalled the 1960s Cold War documentary: “A Day in the Life of Ivan Ivanovitch.”

No longer looking through windshield or car window, I felt like the “Google Maps Street View Man” himself, as if having been picked up (clicked-on), swung through the air with arms and legs flailing, then “dropped.”

Our museum’s employees have complained for three months about city workers’ “underground” work on the street we take to work. As I approached the barricade and detour signs, I realized they had lost all meaning for me; and stepping past, I looked over at the street’s great hole and smiled.

The next day, feeling the urge for a hot dog, I walked in another direction, but still only about a half-mile, to the little grocery operated by a Middle-Eastern man. He makes and sells hot dogs (beef) which are very tasty, and reasonably  priced. He’s a “cool” guy, as were the Nassars who ran their fruit stand (store) on East Innes when I was growing up. He also sells men’s Middle-Eastern shirts, and they’re really “neat.” I must buy one in “better times.”

On another necessary half-mile walk, I passed an old brick tobacco warehouse used to house Union prisoners over 150 years ago. Being on foot, I saw that some lower, groundwater-absorbing bricks were weathering back to clay. Unfortunately, Salisbury’s Confederate Prison wasn’t allowed to “decompose,” being returned more quickly to its physical origins via General Stoneman’s penchant for “cremation.”

Crossing one street, I stepped on an exposed, severely rusted old Danville street-car rail. Salisbury’s stay shiny, being quickly reburied upon reappearance, the way some flood-prone cities quickly rebury floating coffins.

In weekly closing, I must tell you that today’s column title, “Walking Down City Streets on an Overcast Day,” is a veiled paraphrase of the title of a famous Robert Frost poem.

In similar vein, if I should remain without automobile from here on out, I’ve discovered that at the farthest of any of my foot-measured (truly, “foot-“measured) needs-fulfilling trips, I have only “about a half-mile to go before I sleep.”