Gone in a Flash
March 23^rd, 2004
2:14 A. M.

I may finally have a post which may truly offend someone out there. Particularly, if you happen to work in the sanitation department of a mid-sized metropolis.

Let's say that someone who was driving down a street had to get over close to the curb because someone was unloading a u-haul, and on-coming traffic was having to swerve into their lane. Let's say that this person didn't realize, until too late, that a herbie-curbie was sitting too close to the street. Let us finally say that this person clipped the herbie, and it knocked the passenger side mirror completely off the car.

There is a law in this particular city that dictates residents return the herbie from the curb after seven A. M. However, people in this town also remember when sanitation workers used to go to the sides of people's houses to lift and carry cans to the truck, and then replace the cans at the sides of the houses. When these wheeled herbies came out, it eliminated the lifting and carrying.

But, for some mystifying reason, the citizenry was required to place the containers on the curb (I suppose the word "herbie" had to rhyme with something).

Well, all this has happened here in Lexington. And, the side-view mirror being knocked off ... well, let's say my (relatively) new Mistubishi Galant now only has one side-view mirror. Why that herbie was left so close to the curb, I have no idea. I mean ... how much trouble would it have been for that herbie to have been set farther back from the street?