I used to think I’d die being raided by the government for wrongthink, or perhaps I’d be gored by a bull. Those ways of dying are not completely off the table, but now that we live in town, they are slightly less likely.
After living off-grid for more than fifteen years, raising our own food, planting fields and gardens, harvesting from the land, caring for animals small and large, my wife and I moved to town and we’ve been living here downtown for a little over a year. “Likely cause of death,” has changed. I told my co-workers I’m more likely to be hit by a truck on Baker Street, and that’s no lie.
Ok, Brownwood (and actually people who frequent cities anywhere, small and large,) there are rules to how you are supposed to drive. I used to tell my father that in Lubbock, where he still lives, there are only two kinds of drivers… 1. Eighty-year-old shut-ins who only get out for doctor visits and who drive thirty miles under the speed limit and never use blinkers. 2. Nineteen year old college kids who hammer the gas when the light turns green, swerve in and out of traffic, refuse to let you in, and who never, ever use blinkers. This combination of types of drivers is very bad.
In Brownwood, we have these kinds of drivers:
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Blue-collar workers in pickup trucks who have made them as loud as possible and try to get to 50mph between red lights. They refuse to believe that anyone could actually live downtown, so when they get in the canyons of Center Avenue, they try to break the glass on the Manor with the noise.
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Moms driving a 2009 Sentra and texting or holding the phone to their head and blowing through red light because “it looked like no one was coming.”
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Middle class passers-thru who think Center and Baker are great shortcuts and if you can catch the lights, you can hit 60 between 10mile wine bar and the bookstore.
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Bart the real estate agent who just decided one day that lights, signs, speed limits, etc. are for other people because he just got a contract on a house from some dummies coming from California who want to buy a house sight-unseen before the state gives their old house to the homeless.
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Just the nicest people in the world who will stop on Center to wave for you to jaywalk across the street in the middle of the block, putting your life in danger from drivers 1, 2, 3, and 4 even though the sun is shining and you can’t see them waving through the dark window tint or the bug guts on the glass so it looks like Jeffrey Dahmer just decided to park on Center Street while Karen Fittipaldi screams past them the other way texting her blue-collar-loud-truck husband that she’ll pick up the kids from the parole hearing if she makes it on time.
I don’t want to cross the street just because you’re waving for me to. I like to make my own decisions on when I’m going to be killed by a bread truck. So, here’s the deal. There are rules to all this stuff. If you have the right of way, and the light is in your favor, then just do what the rules say to do. Proceed. Use your blinker. Drive the speed limit. I get that you are very nice and being wonderful, but stopping on Center or Baker to wave pedestrians across the street is a bad idea.
The rest of you… Slow the hell down when you’re downtown, you muppets.
Also, you rocket engine welding truck jockeys and wannabe drifters… shocker… but people are living downtown now. And not just in the Manor. There are apartments, Airbnb joints, etc. Sometimes we like to take naps. After dark sometimes we go to sleep. It sounds crazy, but if I find out who you are I’m going to set up in front of your house and blast Fats Waller records holding a turntable over my head like Lloyd Dobbler until you grow up and ease up on the decibels.
Also, if you don’t share this with everyone you know, I’ll know that you didn’t and when I see you downtown, I will frown appropriately at you.
Whew! I feel better already!
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Michael Bunker is a local columnist for BrownwoodNews.com whose columns appear periodically on the website.
