If it is a Beautiful Fall Weekend You Can Count on Being Solicited at The Four-Way Stop

One of the peculiar joys of living in Sparta is that you can always count on the fact  that the more beautiful the weekend weather is the more likely you are to be stopped at one of our two four-way stops downtown by a group of people doing their civic duty by holding up traffic collecting for a worthy cause.

I hate worthy causes. Just once I would like to see the community theatre group out there collecting for sequins for the dresses for their upcoming musical. Bead work is expensive!

Why can't it ever be some god-forsaken group like the tea party so I wouldn't have to feel  guilty about complaining that I had to fish my wallet out of the back pocket of my pants? Or Shriners collecting for drinking money? Then I could drive on by guilt free. 

The four-way stops do create a huge advantage for the civic groups in Sparta. They rarely have to hold fund raisers. They just sign up at city hall for one weekend a year for there turn to hijack traffic. But just as I catch myself complaining (or worse) I am greeted by a very nice person with a very good cause. Today it was the Lion's Club collecting for the blind. Other weeks it will be the fire department collecting for Jerry's kids or the Knights of Columbus collecting for mentally handicapped children.

We have a time honored tradition here of placing whatever trinket or flier or roll of candy on our dashboard so that the volunteers will know why you are rolling past on your second, third or fourth trip through the four-way stop.

Lately they have taken to standing outside the doors of Wal-Mart too. This presents a problem to those of us who left our candy roll in the car. Thankfully Larry was with me today. He made the second donation. Of course that didn't stop him from letting the same person he had bought his candy roll from know that he had already given on his way back out of the store. He is so damn friendly it is irritating sometimes.

And even though I had my candy roll prominently displayed on my dash as we rolled back through town on the way home Mr. Friendly had to shout out through my open window, "We already gave!" The volunteer just looked at me as if he were saying, "Is he for real?"

"No. He's just from Kentucky," I would have explained. "Everyone is friendly there."

We have to pass through the four-way stop  later this afternoon on our way to St. Louis and I know no matter how much I beg, plead and cajole Larry will make some friendly shout out to the volunteer letting them know we already gave.

I may eat all the candy before we head out so he will have to  pay again just to get back at him.