So, I had to call the cops this morning.
This really isn't my favorite thing to do, but living on a busy street, where accidents have been known to happen, my fingers have done the walking more than a few times. I learned this morning that I can dial '911" without looking at the phone keypad. Woohoo for me, eh?
Fortunately, there hasn't been an accident, but rather some truck driver has decided to park his eighteen wheeler/semi/tractor trailer out on the main drag we live on. His engine is still running and he walked away from it.
Now, I don't know about you, but this makes me nervous. We live in a residential neighborhood. A residential neighborhood with a lot of traffic, I'll grant you, but eighteen wheelers generally do not use the streets around here as a truck stop. Which I'm pretty sure is what this guy is doing. I saw him get out of the truck and walk toward our little downtown area a little over a half hour ago and he hasn't returned.
Neither have the cops shown up. Which is irking me.
If I haven't explained the weirdness of our locality before, let me explain. We live in Cake Eater Land. Directly across the street, however, is the Minneapolis Province of the People's Republic of Minnesota. The boundary line between the two cities, apparently, is the divider line in the middle of the street. I call 911 and I am routed directly to Cake Eater City's Emergency Response Line. They listen to my schpiel and when they find out the truck is on the east side of the street, they immediately transfer me to Minneapolis. Where I have to repeat my story to a woman who, surprisingly, takes me more seriously than the Cake Eater City woman did, and promises to send a car out. (The Cake Eater City chick seemed disappointed when I told her there wasn't an accident involved.)
Forty-five minutes later....no cops.
And great, the truck just drove off. Fantastic.
This is the second time this guy has done this. It's the same rig. The first time was a week or two ago. The guy just parked his rig, left it running, and walked away. He's not delivering anything. He's just parking there for whatever reason. I'm high-strung, I know, but this makes me nervous. While I'm sure it's probably nothing, that the guy just wanted to get some breakfast or something, even if it's harmless, I don't want eighteen wheelers parking across the street from my house! They're stinky and they're loud. Besides, it's tacky as all get out.
The Cake Eater neighborhood has undergone a tremendous renovation since we moved here. A couple of blocks away, in the little suburban downtown area, there used to be a gas station and a little tobacco shop on one of the four main corners. They bulldozed these buildings and put in a little mini-mall/office building and ever since construction was completed, traffic has gone through the roof. It's jampacked every day during rush hour and during lunch. Backups galore. And that's when it's not snowing. It used to be quiet around here in the evenings. You could count on it. But no longer. It's noisy all day long and doesn't quiet down until well after ten p.m. Add to this the problem we have with speeders, because once they get through the nightmare that is the little downtown area, they jam on the gas and blow through this residential neighborhood at anywhere between forty and fifty miles per hour. Ever since that damn mini mall went up, well, traffic has become a bitch---including a huge increase in truck traffic---and because of our lovely little jurisdiction problem, there apparently isn't anything anyone can do about it, either.
I called the cops about the speeders this summer. Of course, I talked with someone over at the Cake Eater Cop Shop and he said there wasn't anything they could do about the speeders on the east side of the street. Because that's Minneapolis, and they've protested before, claiming the Cake Eater City Cops were poaching on their jurisdiction. The Cake Eater City cops, accordingly, don't bother with that side of the street. If I wanted to do something about that, he said, I had to call the Minneapolis Police Department. I also chatted with him about huge increase in truck traffic, and he said there wasn't anything he could do about that, either, because, technically speaking, the road is owned by Hennepin County and that's their jurisdiction.
AIEEEEEEEEEEE! It's turning into a nightmare. This used to be a quiet neighborhood. Now it's a throughway for commerce! While I'm a free trade kind of girl, this is annoying me. Furthermore, it seems as if I'm going to have to become one of those City Council meeting cranks if I want someone to do something about this, because, currently, no one cares.
Posted by Kathy at February 16, 2005 10:35 AM