Foible #5: Rush Hour

With the population of our town aging, the nursing home had to undergo a major expansion. The problem was that there was no room on any side of it to expand. It was boxed in by the public pool on one side, the post office on the other, and the high school property abutted right behind it. There was space across the street though, so they built a beautiful addition on the other side of the street.

There were two problems though. The first was that to save money the new building did not have its own cafeteria so the residents there had to cross the street back to the old building for their meals. The second problem was that the street they had to cross was Main Street, which was also Highway 11 through our town with a posted speed of 35 miles per hour.

So, three times a day a long, slow brigade of canes, walkers, and shuffling feet crossed the street and brought Highway 11 to a standstill. It wasn’t so bad at breakfast time because most of the nursing home residents ate around 5:30 and there wasn’t much traffic then. But at noontime and at 4:30 in the afternoon when most of the senior citizens ate their dinner, the traffic could back up and reach as far as Miller’s horse farm about a mile outside of town.

The Miller daughters were quite the entrepreneurs and each day after school they set up a lemonade stand at the end of their lane alongside Highway 11 in anticipation of the daily 4:30 traffic jam. They quickly expanded to selling Girl Scout cookies, candy, gum, soda, bottled water, newspapers, and magazines. They made quite a handsome profit because who could resist two cute little salespersons by the side of the road when you are stuck in traffic.

What could be done? The nursing home could not afford a second cafeteria. The town didn’t want to use the school buses to bus the residents across the street because it was harder to get the seniors to climb the bus steps than it was just to have them walk across the street. The town didn’t want to put up a traffic light. Sheriff McFadden didn’t want to hire another deputy to direct traffic all day, but something had to be done. In the meantime, concerned citizens put up homemade signs along the road that said such things as “Drive Slowly, we love our Grandpa” and “Endangered Species Crossing” with a picture of an old person with a cane.

The solution finally came when the school crossing guards came forward with an idea. As a group, the school crossing guards were not that many years away from being in the nursing home themselves, so they had a vested interest in this problem. They expanded their volunteer duties. They worked the nursing home for breakfast and then hurried to school for the beginning of its day. They came back to the nursing home for lunch and were off duty to the end of school at 3:40, and then hurried back to the nursing home for the 4:30 rush hour.

Things worked very well as the crossing guards got the seniors to cross in small groups and gave traffic a chance to clear. Everybody was basically happy. The seniors got their three meals a day as well as three “outings” of exercise. Neither the town nor the nursing home owner had to spend any money. The crossing guards felt like heroes and were greatly appreciated for their generosity. The only ones that were a little unhappy at first were the Miller daughters. Traffic was moving much better so they had to move their lemonade stand and magazine rack in to the very the edge of town to catch the spot where traffic came to a stop, and even then sales went down because the traffic did not stop for very long. But the Miller daughters, bless their hearts, didn’t stay unhappy for very long as they decided to give all their proceeds to the crossing guards for their generous service to the town.

So, everything has worked out, at least for the warm months. We will have to see what happens in the winter.