Wait for What

-Early spring nights are good nights. You have a few friends over whom you feel you have not seen since you crawled into the cave that is winter, you stand around a grill, you yell at the moon in unison about the ills of the world, or at least your corner of it, and you are thankful for the arrival of better weather and easier times.
-Last night, I stood around a fire pit, flipping burgers and drinking a few of Kentucky's bottled best with a couple of really good friends. They are both neighbors and members of my extended family, and more importantly, as it applies to this discussion, active members of our community here in Camelot.
-Between the 3 of us, we have 10 children varying an ages from 10 to 3. We are busy with school, sports, and the lunacy which can be a small village, its politics and gossip. Last night we enjoyed, pondered and berated all that these topics had to offer.
-As it is imminent, and of great importance, our conversation managed to make its way to the referendum on sidewalks. Now, we have discussed this topic ad nausea (though my feelings are no less passionate), but a very good point of the true issue at hand, not really discussed much in this battle between good and evil here, was raised last night. In sending the town's plan back for a re vote, we are opening up ourselves to a reconsideration of everything we, as a town, decide to do.
-One letter writer to the "Advertiser", this week, admittedly not in discussion about the referendum but rather as regards the derelict red brick eyesore at Mead Park, recommended that one course of action, preferred by this writer, would be, instead of tearing down the building as is finally to be done, for the decision to be held, to wait for a different town government to be elected to handle the matter differently (the writer did not like the fact that the dilapidated red brick nothing was to be torn down and instead thought it should be resurrected into some Shangr-i-la, as if putting lipstick on the proverbial pig would not longer make it a pig).
-Since when do we get to override the mandate of the majority to ensure our own selfish, and generally half-assed and whimsical, desires? The point of majority rules is that it speaks the mind of the majority.
-I have to endure the reign of this current flea-bitten regime of half wits. I did not vote for them (before, you roll your eyes, remember, if you read this with an frequency, you know I think we replaced one group of self-centered knuckle-draggers with yet another, and am seriously trying to figure out how to raise Teddy R from the grave amid his everlasting dreams of the charge up San Juan Hill). That said I must endure this administration, and unlike Prius-driving, cause "du jouring" morons like Baldwin and Hoffman, I do not intend to flee the country for four years to a self-imposed political exile (a promise they never, unfortunately, made good on despite my promises of free airfare - one way, of course).
-What this scribe of such supreme lack of intelligence to the "Advertiser" pointed out, and left me with, was a feeling that the view of the majority should not prevail. Time, in this illiterate's mind, should be used to wait out all things and life should be mothballed (a smell I am sure that permeates this writer's life and house) into a closet somewhere until the plan for town or life or community meets with each individuals (or, in this case, this former Larchmont - please fell free to move back - denizen's) desires.
-Damned the voice of the rest of us. Let chaos ensue, time stand still and our town becomes encrypted in a sarcophagus of our own inaction.
-I will be the first to express my disappointment should the "Yes" vote win this week's referendum, but I will live with the vote. I will not, however, allow this town to submit to the vagaries of a referendum on every decision made. I'll be damned if I will stand by idly on that front, and so I have a suggestion, nay a solution, for both the writer of the dribble to the "Advertiser" this week, and to the "Yes" vote party: time capsules.  Let us pack you and your "frozen in time" moments up in a box. We can bury you down in the cemetery (hopefully, reachable by a sidewalk at that point) and from time to time, when we want to see what true folly is all about, or just to muse about how small minded and selfish people can be, we can dig you out and parade you in front of school-aged kids like the old "Car55" movie reels of car crashes and resulting dismemberment, showing those children a true example of what happens when we, as a town, allow a small group of truly challenged people, to hijack the process of democracy and community.