‘Birds are singing and guns are popping all around’
As the saying goes, and was recently printed here, spring has sprung. Flowers are blooming; weeds and beer bottles are springing up everywhere. Birds are singing and guns are popping all around. Look, it’s spring! The weather is warming up and young people have been cooped up all winter. They are looking for some FUN!
The sap is rising in the trees and in young men. Put a couple of beers behind their belly buttons (I used to say behind their belt buckles, but if they wear belts, the buckles are below their navels now), barely above (if at all) their crotches. I still don’t understand that fashion and can’t wait until that fad goes the way of the dinosaur.
Closing a business earlier and reducing crowd capacity is a big concession for the Princess, but these young folks will just find another place to congregate, drink, smoke weed, and generally raise cain. Hopefully they’ll find a place surrounded by plenty of woods so stray bullets won’t harm innocent bystanders.
What these young adults need is a place to constructively gather and enjoy the night: no drinking or smoking. A few years ago the big thing was to put in basketball courts so the folks could play b-ball instead of drink & shoot and whatever. Good intentions pave the highway to hell, and that was just another cobblestone to many.
Back in my day, which wasn’t that long ago, nobody thought of shooting somebody with whom they had a beef. Duke it out.
Think about it a minute. Everybody, well, almost everybody, wants businesses that pay good wages to locate here in Columbus, but who wants to move to an area with even a hint of violence … and an abundance of eyesore-trash?
Things won’t improve until people at the grass-roots level get involved, and it won’t happen overnight. It will take a few years, and there’s no better time to start than now.
Cameron Triplett
Brooksville
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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