Here's another of those columns that might, hopefully, bring up a little nostalgia.
This one first saw light in 2008.
A few things have been added and some were discarded, but it seems to strengthen the thought that some things never change. For instance, in 2008, Lehman Brothers went bankrupt. Cyclone Nargis killed 138,000 people in Myanmar, Sichuan experienced an earthquake that killed 87,000 people and Russia invaded Georgia.
But on to more important contemplations of that early era of ours. One of my pet peeves back then, and still is, as a matter of fact, are the people who advertise their yard sales by nailing a sign to a power pole lining the street.
It may not be as bad as it once was because linemen in the old days made repairs by climbing the pole using spikes that were attached to the lower part of their legs. If one of those spikes encountered a nail, it could have meant a big "owee" for them. Most of that danger is lessened today by the use of mechanical lifting devices.
And I note that we shouldn't use only masculine examples — women climb those poles now, too, you know. And so many vendors of the most unusable items on sale seem to have not been told by their parents that we are supposed to be responsible for cleaning up our own messes. I quoted one sign on North Washington Street in Centralia that was still visible weeks after the sale was apparently concluded.
That 2008 column then attacked drivers who don't seem to know how modern turn signals should be used. They were meant to indicate what the driver intends to do, not what he or she is already doing. Ok, so on occasion or two, I perhaps have been thinking about something else and forgot that one, but we all have, haven't we?
Things were different in "the Old Days," though, weren't they? I learned to drive before turn signals were invented — when we used our arm and hand signals to indicate what our intentions were — and it was disconcerting to be following a driver (or a back seat passenger) who was mimicking those once-standard gestures incorrectly.
For those who are well below the age of Social Security, the left arm was held straight out the window, one crooked at the elbow until the hand pointed straight up meant a right turn, could be anticipated. An arm pointed just straight out of the window indicated a turn to the left could be expected and, consistently, one pointed at the ground foretold a slowing or even a dead stop.
Now, those things weren't difficult to learn, were they? Those simple gestures were replaced by the familiar red lights we see today at the back of the vehicle. And a car being driven halfway through a small town with a turn signal blinking steadily today is an indication that you didn't need to smell the driver's breath to keep a larger space between you. Or are they deeply engrossed in texting someone?
And on another topic, I'm disturbed by the number of parents who are either teaching or permitting their children to ride their bicycles against the flow of traffic. I believe a bicyclist is required by state law to observe all the rules of the road which apply to automobiles. Or am I wrong there? On the other hand, I tended, in the past only, to overlook one law (or maybe it's not a law anymore) that a bicycle could not be ridden on a sidewalk. I was inclined to ignore that one if there was no older person also walking somewhere along that block, but I think it's only right for the kid if they had to be accompanied by an adult and if the child was in his or her exciting time learning how to ride one.
And as for skateboards? As great as they may be when zooming around the skate parks, they're not so much fun to watch if they zoom around children or old fogeys.
If you're old enough to remember when Centralia eliminated overnight camping in Riverside Park and, instead, built a skateboard park with plywood "hills," I was about the only one to pitch for a "bowl" type of construction. Other cities loved them. They kept the skateboarders in the parks, not on the sidewalks.
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Bill Moeller is a former entertainer, mayor, bookstore owner, city council member, paratrooper and pilot living in Centralia. He can be reached at bookmaven321@comcast.net.
