Historical March 1980 report or notice. Original dates, prices and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
I’ve noticed a trend to judge how well we’re doing in life by measuring ourselves against a scale of one to ten on the scoreboard. Such hackneyed devices are to be avoided in serious commentary, I know, but I’m afraid no other metaphor will do as well. I cannot escape the disquieting reality that the score is approximately: the city 2, me 0. Moreover, I have no idea what inning it is. I’m not really sure there are innings, maybe it’s periods or quarters. I do know that I’m losing. Badly.
You may recall that I fell behind when the city installed its new modern trash collection system (The Paper, Nov. 1979). While its true that we eventually get used to anything, these over-sized coffins still bother me. They stand out so bureaucratically against the fresh snow. (I still harbor the fantasy that, because of a tremendous ice storm, one of these fliptop clones will be so firmly frozen to the bricks that when the truck tries to lift it the truck itself will rise in the air and follow the arc designed for the container until the vehicle stuffs itself forever into its harvest gold tomb.)
Now its the License Collector who has “put points on the board” against me. You see, for literally years I have asked any public official I could find to do something to free the city car owner from one of the most ignominious trials anyone is forced to endure. But these officials are so busy passing laws keeping beggars from begging downtown and giving wellto-do suburbanites tax breaks for moving into expensive urban condos that they just never find the time to change the date when city stickers are to be affixed to windshields. The decal’s instructions read “do not apply to cold or frosty windshield.” So I suggested that the date be moved to early April. Simple. But it never happened. I crusaded and got nowhere. It had become a true February tradition like changing the furnace filters or falling down on the ice. So on the Sunday evening before the Monday morning on which the police set up their annual roadblock to ferret out unstickered autos on DesPeres, I grabbed the sticker my wife had purchased and, cursing the cold and frosty windshield, shoved the decal into a bowl of lukewarm water. I waited ninety seconds, took a wet cloth and headed for the car. After dampening the windshield I removed the sticker from the bowl. You can imagine my astonishment when the decal would not slide from the paper. They’ve really done it this year. I muttered.
Astonishment changed to bewilderment and that to a realization that the score was mounting when I discovered that this was not a decal but one of those new-fangled self-sticking things. The label said not to immerse in water. but didn’t say what to do if it were immersed. After all the years of repititious conchtioning, how could they do this to me? Where was my April plan? Where? Sabotaged? The debris of city planners?
It took considerable patience and the techniques used in restoring the Dead Sea Scrolls before the label was in place. I suppose that, once again, I should be grateful for another stride in the inevitable march towards modernity. I am not.
I’m all for progress, but must it always be humiliating? You probably don’t realize it, but right now someone in city hall is planning some improvement that will bring tears to my eyes. And I swear on stacks of governmental razzamatazz to get even. When I score my first run or goal or basket or whatever, I promise you. you’ll be the first to know.
(I can’t really believe that I’m the only jerk to do this. If you, too, were so cruelly tricked by the city. send a confession to The Paper. We will forward them to the Mayor’s complaint bureau so they can see what havoc has been wrought.)
Originally published in The Paper, March 1980.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1980_03.pdf, printed page(s) 4; PDF page(s) 4.
