I can remember when I held my hometown of Sacramento, California in the deepest sort of contempt. I called it "The World's Largest Hick-Town". In a way, that was true. On the other hand, being a hick-town can be something of a virtue.

I wouldn't mind if Sacratomato had somehow failed to catch up with the modern world. At least in some ways. The time before last I went there to visit my mom, I hadn't been there an hour before every cop in town (or so it seemed) raced down mom's street in pursuit of drug dealers. These "businessmen" crashed their car into the neighbor's fence (narrowly missing two cars and another fence) and led the police on a merry chase through many peoples' back yards.

I went into the back yard for a smoke and had a front seat to every episode of COPS I've ever seen. I stayed quite calm until after the dust had settled. Then I got jittery.

When you hear mom or dad or grandparents bemoaning the degeneracy of the modern age, they aren't trying to tell you that things are utterly horrible today. Just not very homey, not completely familiar, and with a certain edge that most of us did without when we were growing up. This isn't the future I eagerly anticipated when growing up. It's more dangerous and there aren't any flying cars.

--Baloo

------------------
Have a place for everything and keep the thing somewhere else; this is not advice, it is merely custom.
-- MARK TWAIN
www.geocities.com/Area51/Shire/8641/

------------------
WHO ARE YOU?