A story in a recent copy of this newspaper made me aware of the fact that I haven’t kept up with the times. That’s something that, as a much younger lad, I used to accuse most older members of the Moeller family of doing (or not doing).
The story that created that thought was about Twin Transit and its partners (whoever they might be) preparing to submit material for a hydrogen fueling station. It goes to show that this old-timer is far behind the rest of the world when it comes to advances in science.
This was more deeply implanted in my mind when the article stated that Twin Transit will receive a small fleet of buses equipped with hydrogen fuel cells as part of a grant next year.
I confess I didn’t know what they were writing about. All I know about propellants is that the cost of them has gone up too fast and too much.
I have mixed feelings.
Obviously, in this time of climate crisis, mass transit is extremely important and the “clean energy” propellants are vital. But reflections and questions keep popping into this old dude’s head.
My first question about Twin Transit: Should it be run to only carry people from one point to another within the boundaries that were laid down in the original creation and not to any destination outside of them? Or should a new regional transit system be established?
Here, by the way, is the way the document of Sept. 24, 1975, describes the boundary:
“The Public Transportation Benefit Area shall include all of the area encompassed by the city limits of the Cities of Centralia and Chehalis and that portion of Lewis County lying between Kresky Road and North National Avenue (Old Highway 99) in section 20 and 17, Township 14 North, Range 2 West, W.H.”
By the way, I haven’t verified this, but I’ve been told there are no citizens living in the county’s increasingly small portion of that land.
So, my problem with Twin Transit in recent years has been that it has — at times — wanted to operate outside of that designated boundary, even back when I served on the board.
What is called Twin Transit’s Green Line to Olympia is a current route, and another named “Purple” has been scheduled to run from Centralia to Castle Rock beginning Aug. 15.
If we wish to have these advances, I hope we also adjust the status of the legal boundary.
Anyway, for newcomers to the area, my first four years on Twin Transit’s board of directors started in 1980, when I was Centralia’s mayor under a “commission” form of government, and after a few years hiatus, I spent another dozen years on the board when I served on the newer Centralia City Council.
So I guess I can relate with how things used to be in “The Good Old Days.”
Changing to other things in life, you may not believe this, but I’ve gone two whole weeks without tripping and/or damaging another part of my body.
And let me now change gears once more and present many of the one-sentence notes I’ve made to myself and have later wondered why.
1.) An actor cannot believe he or she can be successful unless they can become the character. Pretending to be someone else must end with a rising curtain.
2.) You’re really an old-timer if you can remember all the wonderful things you could make with a length of what was called “haywire.”
3.) At what point did expressing that word cease being used when something went wrong?
4.) One thing I’d like to see available once again: a new automobile built on the order of a 1939 Chevy coupe.
5.) Is there a disk jockey who spun the records in the 1960s who did not fall in love with Linda Ronstadt?
6.) How could that near panic over the loss of most brands of a child’s formula product occur without an agreement between providers of those products to stop production at the same time?
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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.
