Driver’s Side Diatribe
By Al Vinikour   

Nothing brings me down faster than seeing a wreath or some other kind of memorial alongside the road that generally indicates somebody was killed at that spot.

Occasionally I wonder how that was possible because the vehicle would have had to have been about as agile as an articulated bus to have wound up in that position from the road itself. But regardless of the positioning, the bottom line is…life ended there for somebody at one time.

My feelings on this matter might surprise some who are used to reading my rants where I advocate instant and painful death to those who do something as mundane as cutting me off in traffic. Truth be told, I’m a softie when it comes to someone’s loved ones being removed from this earth. For instance, I have never felt the emotion I did when I saw the Vietnam Memorial for the first time. To think that over 55,000 individuals, average age of 19, were lost to their families forever is the height of depression. But I digress.

I see nothing wrong with roadside memorials. In their own way they say as much about honoring the dead as something as profound as the Iwo Jima War Memorial across the Potomac River from Washington DC. It’s even more heart-wrenching when a doll or other object signifying a child was killed there is visible.

Casual passers-by will never know what the circumstances were that led to the death — or deaths — of drivers and/or passengers…or even pedestrians at that particular location. But the indication is that someone did and that should be enough to warrant even a nanosecond of silent reflection.
Some communities however have voted to ban creation of roadside memorials — citing them as everything from distractions to littering. How utterly disgusting and callous!

Would these same individuals have voted to ban the leaving of flowers, cards or other items of respect at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City? Of course not! But try putting a cross or toy truck or something meaningful on County Road WW where a teenager and his little brother were killed by a hit-and-run driver and that would constitute littering.

I think such a sight (I hope) would make someone think twice as to how they’re driving and subconsciously make them drive more carefully because something obviously happened there to cause a death. It’s not as if a wooden cross, Star of David or some other kind of kind of object of respect would be a traffic hazard. I don’t imagine a Kenworth Diesel driving down a rural road would be thrown into a deadly spin because the trucker caught sight of a bouquet of chrysanthemums. So why would some heartless bastard from a city council demand that a memorial for someone’s child or relative is the same thing as a Burger King bag that’s been tossed out the window of a moving vehicle?

Carrying this one step further, when I was in high school during the Mesozoic Era it was always considered “cute” to drive out to Bartz’s Woods on a Monday and see how the Panty and Condom Trees bloomed over the weekend. Why can something as “sinful” as that cause such tittering (pardon the pun) but yet a wreath that says “To My Loving Son” be viewed as litter?

My advice to those who live in communities where banning of these roadside remembrances seems to be on the agenda is this: keep track of who voted to have them removed. When the next election cycle begins put posters with the person’s picture, name and the tag line “he thinks memorializing the death of your loved one(s) constitutes litter.”

I guarantee this; no one will memorialize their defeat.