Monday, November 1st, 2004 - A Small Pet Peeve

First of all, let me say this: I can't believe it's November already! Ahhh! There's going to be snow soon! Where did the summer go?! (oh, wait, the summer never really came to Buffalo this year)

Ok, the pet peeve:

In the town where I live there is an ordinance that people are not allowed to rake their leaf piles into the street. Instead, the leaves should be raked to the curb, between the sidewalk and the street, and the "leaf-sucker" truck will come by once a week or so to collect the leaves (which then gets turned into mulch and is given to residents for free).

But of course, all the other residents of my street have as usual raked their leaves into the street. The town talks about issuing citations every year but never actually does it. It's a hazard, since you don't know if something might be concealed within the leaves that could hurt someone or damage a vehicle.

Despite the hazard potential, I was annoyed enough about today that when I was out driving I would run my car through the leaf piles in the road so as to scatter them again. What the heck, if I run into something, my car is worth, oh...$350 on the open market, so who cares? It was fun, and maybe I pissed a couple people off.

But here's a fun little addition to the story. I'm driving through these piles, as I mentioned, and there is a truck behind me. I'm sure the driver noticed what I was doing. Well, we come to a point in the road, and someone has taken a long, flexible stick of perhaps 6 feet in length and stuck both ends into the holes of a sewer cover in the street, forming an arch not unlike an oversized croquet wicket. I drive around it, since my car is small, and as I look in the mirror I see the truck following me take particular pains to run right over it. *hee hee* The stick popped right back up after the truck had passed. I still thought it was funny.