Month: October 2004

There are several of these on Broadway, between Pine and Thomas. The cone is attached to a scrap of recycled street sign and the sign is bolted into the sidewalk. At first I took them for art installations made from pilfered street signs. But it seems more likely that the recycled signs are covering holes that were cut in the sidewalk to make room for new parking pay stations.

Things are much simpler — more obviously explained — than I usually allow them to be.

A few parking restriction signs in the same couple of blocks have been covered over with blue panels.

I was only four years old, so I don’t remember this, but I’ve heard the family story. We had gone out to Breakwood Restaurant after church. My grandparents were with us. They usually skipped mass, but they had joined us on that Sunday. Mt. St. Helens erupted at some point during the course of the meal and we didn’t know it. Dark churning clouds came rolling in from the west. The sky went dark and my grandpa said, “It looks like we chose the right day to go back to church.”

Mt. St. Helens had a small eruption at around noon.