Prospect Street is a 'gotcha' street. We used to test one another's knowledge of the streets of Bangor, in the firehouse. There are no addresses, any more, since the parsonage was razed, on Prospect, though there is a hydrant at the corner with Center Street. So it's righteously obscure. "Ha! Gotcha!" we could say, when the other guy didn't know it.

Indeed, it's the corner with Center Street where all this took place. Center is an important enough secondary street, commencing downtown at City Hall, running behind St. Joseph's Hospital to the intersection of I-95 and Broadway. It's miles long, but used mostly by the natives of the town. First Baptist Church is at 56 Center, at the crest of the steep hill by City Hall. Before the church lies a sort of open square where, in quick succession, Prospect, Park, and Somerset all come to their end on Center.

Now, from its root by City Hall to the top of that hill where the church is, it's a one-way street. Our cop was coming up that hill, and when he hit the crest of it, I was facing him, nose-to-nose, and I hung a right onto Prospect, because we use the site of the old parsonage as a parking area. Prospect is maybe eight car lengths long. There's parking behind 50 Center, a big apartment house, and parking behind the church, off either side of Prospect, but it has no other function but to lead us into our parking areas.

The cop, the instant he saw me, turned on his lights and gave a little bleat on the siren. He followed me in and left the lights going. I mean, he was on a one way street, and I was head-on coming the other way, so he knew what that meant, and stopped me. A traffic stop.

"License and registration, proof of insurance? You know what I stopped you for, right?" They always ask that.

"No." I was pretty definite. "I don't have the foggiest idea why you did that." Seriously, I was imagining a light was out or something. The license thing was much more than I expected, and ticked me off. Christ, no one can speed there, you're making a tight turn between parked cars. Half of the City Hall people park up here, and in behind the church, because there are no meters and no time limits. It's always fully lined with cars by the time I get in at eight.

"Technically, according to the DOT, the street is one way right over to there." He was gesturing into the square, which would be the Park Street corner. "You were going the wrong way on it."

He thought he was parked in a driveway, but he was blocking a street, Prospect Street. The 'gotcha' street had fished him in. If it had been a driveway, then he would have been right. You don't get to drive up the one way the wrong way, just because your driveway happens to be the very first one. The open square includes everything between Prospect and Park, though, it's all one big polygonal space, and that's why he was talking technically.

I cocked an eye at him. Fifty years we've been turning up into there, everyone in the church, everyone in the apartment house, and all the downtown city hall people who park there. The church is older than the state of Maine! "You realize that every last person who uses this facility"-- the church-- "and that apartment house comes in this way? That's how you come in here, how we've come in here for decades!"

"And every last time I see it, I'm pulling them over!" He was pretty sure he was in the right, still. "When's the last time you were pulled over?"

"Pulled over? I don't attach any importance to it; Christ, I don't know! Two, three years?" I wasn't going to mention the speeding stop in Ashtabula, Ohio in March. Maybe I shouldn't have driven it in that I didn't pay much regard to the doings of the Department.

Well, he beetled off to commune with his radio, or cell, or whatever they use now, about my numbers and paperwork, saying he'd see how I checked out!

When he emerged, he said he was "only giving me a warning-- this time!-- but the violation carries a hundred thirty dollar fine."

"Well, good luck with that!" I don't think we liked each other very well. Turns out, I worked with his father for twenty years at all the stations in Bangor, and I helped his dad out when times were tight and he was moving the family to their new lot out there, before Joey was born.

But in the end, the one-way only goes from Harlow downtown to Prospect Street, and the signs were clearly placed to reflect that. This information will be passed to the young man, and he'll always know one more 'gotcha' street. And everyone can resume driving right in as they always have.

Google maps can hold up its metaphorical head. It knows the street. If you check the street view, the cars in front of the church are facing the wrong way on the 'one-way,' too, and the cars on the right hand side of Prospect are facing in, because one does in fact go in that way. Fourteen cars came in that way by eleven o'clock that morning, counting mine and the cop's own car, because the quilting group was meeting.