Garage Logic: Big City v. Country Living

Last week on the drive home from work, I was listening to Joe Soucheray's Garage Logic radio talk show. He was quacking on about a group in St. Paul that is pushing for an ordinance that requires St. Paul businesses to shutoff business and billboard lights at 10 PM. Soucheray rambled on about the silliness of this proposed ordinance and its obvious anti-business focus. The group said it's not anti-business and just wants to be able to see the stars at night.

Coincidently, there was a development built across the field from me going on five years ago. When the roads were put in, there were no street lights included. It is the country and not in the city limits. A couple years later, street lights were put up. The light from those newly installed street lights has dimmed the night sky I view out my back door. I have it from a good source that the reason the lights were put in was because it was too dark at night. Most of those people living there moved from the Twin Cities.

Across the field the other way, a family from the Twin cities built a big house on the hill in what was previously farm pasture. A year or so after moving in, they were complaining to the town board chairman about the neighbors fence line. It seems they thought the fence was too dangerous, because their son road his dirt bike next to it. The chairman explained to them that the fence had been there for over a hundred years and it was currently being used to keep in their neighbors horses.

The family didn't understand that kind of logic. The house was quickly put up for sale and they moved back to the city. This fall I've been hearing the whine of a dirt bike over that way. It's probably time to check in with the chairman again...

Garage Logic