CAN’T YOU SMELL THAT SMELL?

Temecula, CA – Most people love being right, I don’t. The reason for that strange logic is that the people I point out things to as a journalist, never pay attention, until the bag of shit hits them in the face (see The Road To Wellville, 1994), and then it’s too late. They say politics makes for strange bedfellows. When bedfellows ‘knock boots’ the aftermath is that smell. So I’m asking, can’t you smell that smell?

This story starts a few years and about $360,000 ago. The city was in an uproar. People were out in the streets, I mean, parks, this is Temecula, after all. The buzz was all over the town. Outsiders were again, like wolves, at our gates. Flying over the crowd you could see two words spelled out rather plainly, orchestrated by some x-PTA chairman it would seem. Those two words said ‘NO QUARRY!

The reasons were several; more truck traffic, more smog, air quality for our children and young babies, yada, yada, yada. But as I recently told my favorite ‘man-rancher’, the trick is not to fall for the obvious, which is harder than you might guess. So as I looked around that sea of team spirit, moms, dads, students, band members, jocks, etc, I spied a man carrying a bag of chicken feed. My Spidey Sense went off, for this man’s cry wasn’t health but wealth. I harkened to listen.

‘Alms for the poor! Alms for the poor! Alms for my poor city. All we’re getting is chicken feed.’ This seemed a strange cry in the midst of soccer moms, Sunday school teachers, and the like. But I learned to pay attention to what politicians really say beyond the rhetoric. Outside the occasional chuckle most people paid little attention to the balding man who continued his ‘town crier’ mantra.

As time spun out from that moment, the city geared up against the big union machine. Editorials were written. Lines were drawn in the rock and costly court proceedings were undertaken with the city’s constituency cheering the council troops on. And on it went. More rallies were held. More editorials were written. More flesh was pressed with a pledge to fight on until victory was achieved. I followed the smoke from a distant fire, and if truth be known, though impartial to the general public and my readers (opinion not withstanding), I too rooted for the home team. ‘Win one for the Gipper’.

Perhaps you can now understand my drop-jaw expression when I read that Liberty Quarry was not going to fight T-Town’s annexation around/of the proposed quarry mine site. I felt hit in the face with a granite bag of shit as did the small band of protesters out on the duck pond on Wednesday. Looking like the virgin prom queen who shows up the next morning with ‘bed head’ as she snuggles into the arms of Biff the quarterback, the city has made up or is it made out with Liberty Quarry. The new Old Town parking shine, cough, garage and the soon-to-be completed monument to the ‘powers that be here’ Hall may look good but, ooh, ooh, that smell, can’t you smell that smell? If this were Denmark, I’d know what it was. But well, here in the valley, sniff, sniff, it’s not chicken feed I smell, it's more like chicken …. OK, everybody raise your hand who thought this column was going to be about pot from the title. Gotcha!