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The Victoria GAZETTE |
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Have you ever seen a more lush Victoria? It’s like someone installed a city-wide sprinkler system this spring. No curbside deadness from winter salt. No brown spots in the lawns. Shrubs are denser. Leaves are greener. Blooms are bigger. Mowing is more frequent. Thank you, Public Works. We use a walk-behind push and steer-type mower at our place, and in a drought or dry season it doesn’t have to come out of the garage so often. This year, however, Mower Man soon wearied of his weekly two-hour walk around our trees and up our hill. At just the right time he happened across a happy antidote for his weariness that substantially increased the cylinder index in the neighborhood. No, he didn’t buy a riding lawnmower, since exercise is an important part of the deal here. It’s a used 48-inch walk-behind push and steer-type mower that he saw for sale on a street in Wayzata. Mower Man now does our yard in 37 minutes. Says he, “It has multiple speeds so I can walk as fast or as slow as I want. So far I’m only in second speed. As I become more comfortable with it, I may go to third, but probably never 4th or 5th. You’d need a big straightaway for that.” Can you stand the excitement? *** Speaking of cylinders, on our way up north this past weekend (destination: a funeral, not a lake cabin), we witnessed a chain of events that easily could have been deadly. For about one or two miles on Highway 169, heading north as I said, an old rust-spattered car, with its tail bouncing and dragging, traveled side by side with us for a while, back and forth in two lanes one way, and then moved ahead of us at a good clip. The man behind the wheel, in his 30’s or 40’s, was hanging on with both hands, sitting forward, eyes straight ahead. We watched him pass a car on the right, using a turn lane to do so, which is illegal, as you know. The back end of the old car kept bouncing to the pavement and smoke was coming out of the vehicle. Crossing from one lane to the next, he somehow ended up directly behind us in the ebb and flow. And then, at the next intersection, as we stopped at the red light, Allan could see in his rearview mirror that the old beater was coming at us without slowing down. At the last minute, instead of plowing into us, he veered to the right of us, still not slowing down, tried to make the right turn, frightening other drivers, bunching up cars and bringing them to a halt. Not being able to make the turn, he hit the shallow ditch, kept his momentum, did wheelies in front of the large brick building at the corner, them rammed into that brick building, bounced back, and landed on all fours in a dead stop. As smoke from his car got thicker, the driver opened his door and ran away from it. Then he spied a Hennepin County Sheriff’s car that had moved to the edge of the road near him, having uncannily witnessed the entire mouth-opening scene from the other side of the intersection. We’ll probably never know the whole story, but we think the guy’s brakes must have gone out (versus his mind). If that’s the case, the driver did very well. If he wouldn’t have tried to make that right turn, he would surely have hit us or other vehicles crossing the intersection on their green light. It all happened so fast but it appeared that nobody was hurt. I suspect, however, that the rusty cylinders probably came to the end of their life. *** There’s a billboard hanging around the highways, including locally, and I think it’s dangerous. You’ve probably seen it. It’s very plain and empty except for a bunch of letters crammed together in a long word that doesn’t read or register easily for me. I believe it’s posed in the form of a question: “Whatchajiggoddumon?” My inclination is to focus on the darn billboard till I can figure it out, all the while going with the traffic. Not easy. Not safe. As I said, dangerous. I’m still not positive of its correct spelling. Even as a passenger I can’t get it down pat, so I’ve asked Mower Man how to pronounce the run-together letters from the billboard and he says it’s “What’cha jiggin’ ‘em on?” Does that look to you like “Whatchajiggoddumon”? Apparently it’s fishing talk and somebody is trying to sell jigs. Jigs jiggle and can attract attention not unlike a standing-still billboard. If we don’t be careful, we’ll be caught. *** You’ll find more cylinders in this issue of the Gazette, like a 1968 Camaro and a 1955 Packard, a Suzuki Burgman 650, an antique Ford 961 Diesel Tractor, and a VW Beetle in camo. Funny how one thing leads to another until all the space gets used up each and every month. |
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July 2010 |
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From the Editor |