Column for Oct. 27, 2011

One of the things I have opined about since moving to North Carolina is the paradigm I found here about relative disregard for the inconvenience that people cause others. Call me a Yankee if you want, I really don’t care. I realize that I have a French surname not often found below the Mason-Dixon Line. Then again, I was born farther south than most anyone reading this column. I was raised in the state of New Hampshire and moved to Raleigh after graduating college to take a job there.

I have been in North Carolina more than half of my life now, certainly about all of my adult life. If that makes me still a Yankee in the eyes of some, so be it. I have a few news flashes for all those Southerners who readily throw around the term Yankee. First, the Civil War has been over since 1865. Second, Reconstruction is over and nobody who was considered a “Carpetbagger” is still alive today. Third, Yankees don’t consider the term a derogatory one, so try as you might, you are not going to get anywhere tossing that term around.

So why do I preface my column this way? Well, I was raised with the Yankee ethic that you should put forth a little more effort so as to not inconvenience other people if at all possible. For an area that claims “Bible Belt” status and high morals, the non-inconvenience concept does not seem to be among high on the priority list. Whether it is regard for others’ time, money, or effort, I have quite honestly found such consideration lacking in The South. Nowhere is this more evident to me than in the willingness to close roads around here.

In a small town of only 3.2 square miles (if Selma were a perfect square, that would mean that each side would only be 1.788854381999832 miles long) I find a good many street closings all allegedly in the name of safety or for the convenience of a select few. There are a bunch of streets that plain stop at railroad crossings. We have endured repeated street closings at live crossings that seem to drag on for weeks on end, and there has even been a debate about closing yet another street at a rail crossing. I wrote my opinion on that matter a few weeks back.

The Clayton Bypass was just fine the way it was for traffic entering onto Interstate 40. The problem was not design of the interchange but rather the sheer volume of commuting traffic. But some well intentioned control freak that does not mind further inconveniencing motorists thinks that it is a good idea to shut down one of the two lanes of traffic merging onto the interstate, so we have another example close to home about which to rant. Someone could not leave well enough alone.

What really cheesed me off recently was that I was driving to Research Triangle Park one morning and saw a work crew nailing down wood forms in the road at the rail crossing on North Pollock Street. I thought “To be sure, they are not going to make a traffic island there.” Sure enough, when I came home later in the day and drove southward on Pollock Street from Anderson Street, there were concrete traffic islands on either side of the tracks. Some pinhead behind a desk somewhere probably thinks that this is going to be a great safety feature. I see it as a huge inconvenience.

October 31st for many people means Halloween. For me, it marks the ninth anniversary of the day I closed on my house inside the 3.2 square miles we call Selma. I found out that there are some traffic lights that are short cycled and that there are some traffic lights that really need a protected left turn signal installed. One such light just happens to be on my regular route of travel here in town. In order to turn left onto West Anderson Street from Pollock Street, I used to wait at the traffic light on Pollock. Before 7 PM, that can be a difficult thing to do, believe it or not. I found that it is much more convenient to catch a break in traffic just after the railroad track and turn left onto Railroad Street, drive past the backside of my house, and go halfway around the block in order to get to my house. It is usually faster and more convenient that way. For the nine years that I have been living here, I have taken that shortcut, even if it is longer in distance. But no more.

Just how many reported accidents do we have at that intersection and rail crossing that would warrant the expenditure of revenue and inconvenience to drivers? I can not recall a single one that I have witnessed in my nine years of living here, not to mention several years of working in Selma previously. I am not sure if this was a governmental expenditure or a railroad expenditure. Either way, it was entirely unnecessary but probably made some bureaucrat feel good about the existence of his job.

Why the inconvenience and expense? Why the disregard for revenue expenditures and the inconvenience to motorists? I just don’t get it.