Sunday, July 8, 2012

Out in the Hood

I had one of those "this town is going to hell in a handbasket" moments recently when for the third time in one week I saw a car not move over into the passing lane to make room for someone merging onto highway 113.

A little background here: highway 113 (between Davis and Woodland anyhow) is two lanes in either direction with about twenty feet of grass between. It's very flat (except for one spot where it goes over the railroad tracks), straight, and has two spots where the CHP likes to radar people. Every once in a while during the summer the grass catches fire and causes a few cars to back up while waiting for the smoke to clear, but mostly the agreed-upon speed is sixty-five in the slow lane, and seventy-five in the passing lane. In late summer the on-ramps smell like rotting tomatoes because the Romas roll off the trucks when they go around corners. There is not that much traffic, and people tend to be more polite -- possibly because there's a reasonably good chance that if you make a rude gesture to someone it will turn out to be someone you know.

The Woodland on-ramps are almost half a mile long and very gently curved, and even in my Civic I can easily get up to 70 mph so that I could merge onto the highway even if there were traffic in the slow lane. But -- and this is different from busy freeways -- everyone, but everyone, moves over to make room. It's the little things.

So after seeing the third person not move over this week (new people!), I was reassured to see proper behavior by the next few cars. It's one of the things I like about Woodland.

Things like that remind me of a conversation I had with Jeff and Rvan a few months ago. I was ranting about people who feel the need to carry cell phones everywhere. They were surprised that I didn't carry mine with me to walk the dogs. (The furthest I ever get from home with the dogs on a walk is about four blocks.) I was surprised in turn to find out that they both carry not only their cell phones but their wallets and keys with them if they walk around the neighborhood.

Keys? Why would they need their keys?

Turns out they lock up their houses when they walk around the neighborhood.

Who does that?

2 comments:

JJ said...

Um, everyone else I know does that. We are not secretly hoping that someone will "break into the house" and accidentally fix something or steal something already broken.

Theresa B (of Nebulopathy) said...

Ooh, do you think I could get someone to take the television? Or maybe just mop the floor?

(And yes, it took me over a week to notice that I wasn't getting new mail notifications...)