According to the public notice section of a previous issue of this newspaper, the City of Superior will hold a public hearing Tuesday to consider the implementation of the recommendations contained in a sign study.
I haven’t studied the suggestions and do not want to comment either for or against but I want to caution that change is sometimes hard.
I was in high school when stop signs were placed on Eighth Street. The signs were needed and today I’m glad they are there but I wasn’t so sure when they first went up.
I was enroute from the Superior High School, then located on Tenth Street to the KRFS studio, to complete that week’s School Bell radio program. I obeyed the stop sign and stopped, looked in the rear view mirror and saw a pickup flying south on Kansas Street and then kerwham! The near new truck crashed into the rear of my 10-year-old Ford car. I turned off the ignition switch and started to get out when to my surprise my vehicle was rolling uphill backwards.
Though it didn’t run long because the truck’s radiator was smashed, the driver was attempting to back up. That was probably good as he cleared the vehicles out of the intersection. He could not get away because my vehicle was fastened to his.
We had to remove at least one of my vehicle’s bumper risers to free the two vehicles. And with antifreeze pouring onto the street, the pickup’s motor was soon overheating.
Carl Washington, a nearby neighbor heard, and perhaps saw the accident and called for the police. W. L. Wilcox was the officer on duty and when he arrived he asked me, “Bill, how fast were you backing up when you hit the pickup?”
I should have written down all my conversations with Officer Wilcox for they made for same great quotes.
One night as I was with friends trying to help a classmate who had locked her keys in her brother’s automobile. Officer Wilcox stopped to see what we were doing and graciously was holding her powerful police officer’s special flashlight to we could better see what was going on. As we worked I heard him say, “Calm down boys. I know if I wasn’t here you’d have this car open in a flash.”
Years later when I was an adult and owner of a battered dump truck, I was using the truck to haul debris to the city landfill following a windstorm. The then retired police officer was the landfill attendant. I stopped at the gate and asked what the disposal charge would-be. He stepped onto the truck’s running board and looked at the load. He turned to me and said, “Son its like this 50 cents if you take the truck home or $1.00 if you leave it.”
But I’m supposed to be writing about traffic signs and not telling Wilcox stories.
I wasn’t old enough to drive when the highways moved from Superior’s Second Street to Third Street, but I remember seeing motorist blow through the Third Street stop signs and stop at Second.
While I don’t have a problem with Second Street, I do have problems in a nearby community where stop signs have been rearranged. I sometimes stop when I shouldn’t and don’t stop when I should. It has made me so nervous that I poke around the town checking each intersection as I approach to see where the stop signs are placed.
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