I have a friend who lives in the residential area that lies between Lark Avenue and Highway 85. Of course, she has been paying a whole lot of attention to the evolving development that has come to be called “the North Forty” development. The North Forty lies on the other side of Highway 17 from her neighborhood, also between Lark and 85 (it’s the area outlined in yellow on the map). Yesterday I bumped into her for coffee and she told me that she had a story for me. As usual, I told her I wasn’t a newspaper but I listened. She had recently gone to a meeting about the plans for what was going to happen with the North Forty and they said something about having an access road that would basically hit Lark Avenue across the street from the Lark Avenue Car Wash. Well, let me tell you, that immediately got my attention. “You mean there is going to be ANOTHER stop light on Lark Avenue?” I burst out laughing. Lark Avenue is already nothing but a three-quarters of a mile long road with innumerable stop lights. Hell’s bells, my car never gets out of second gear when I go down Lark. So my friend got me going.
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As I continually remind everyone, I’m a farmer. We don’t measure distances in feet but acres and we don’t measure height in feet but in phone pole lengths and I hate stop lights. I really liked it when you could drive down Almaden road from New Almaden all the way to Minnesota Avenue in Willow Glen and never have to touch the clutch in your old, flat-bed truck, except for maybe at a few stop signs. Now that’s what I call driving. This stuff you do now-a-days, where you go a quarter of an acre and then wait for some stupid machine to turn green, even if there’s no one else in the intersection, that’s just plain stupidity. I guess that’s what happens when you have too many people all packed together in a tiny, little place. As I was growing up, it’s what they always call “progress.” Hrmph!! Progress = Stupidity? So they are going to tear out an orchard so they can put in more stop lights where there . . .
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