Taking It To the Streets

Somebody once told me why the street patterns aren't the same all over Cheboygan, and I suppose it's true for other cities as well. Most cities weren't built all at once. Somebody bought a piece of property and subdivided it into lots. This guy had a plan, he mapped it all out, and this map is called a "plat". Then somebody else bought another piece of property years later, had a different plan and made a plat of that. This new plat may or may not have been adjacent to the first plat, but it was different. If the two plats were not adjacent, the land in between them eventually filled up, with or without a plat. So the whole city was built in this patchwork configuration.

When there is a jog in the road, it's probably because there was something there that they didn't want to remove, like a big old tree that people had become attached to. By the time the tree died, straightening out the road would have required demolishing or moving some buildings, and nobody was interested in doing that. There are a couple of places around here where a street had to cross railroad tracks at an angle because the railroad tracks were there first. The best way for a road to cross railroad tracks is at a 90 degree angle, anything else can be inconvenient or even dangerous because wheels can get caught and turn a vehicle unexpectedly, so they put a jog in the road to make the crossing come out to 90 degrees. The D&M railroad discontinued service to Cheboygan back in 1990 when the paper mill closed, and pulled their tracks out shortly thereafter, but the jogs in the road are still there.

People conduct demonstrations in the streets to attract attention to their cause. It might have worked at one time but they over did it in the 60s, and now they just piss people off when they block traffic and make a public spectacle of themselves. I said back in the 60s that every city should have a park or something with a road that makes a big loop and use it for parades and demonstrations. Then they could ban them from the public streets without interfering with anybody's rights of free speech and assembly. The Constitution recognizes these rights, but I don't think it says people can exercise them anywhere they want at the expense of other people.

I have always felt the same way about Santa Claus as Old Dog does. We told our daughter the truth about Santa right from the start, but told her that she should respect the right of other people to believe in him if they want to.