Orangeville: The Median Part II

Ah Orangeville...What a town! A certain "Ken H_ywood" of Mono is one of two local citizens who regularly correspond with the editors of the town papers.

So far this month (and the month is still young) Mr. H_ywood has attacked the National War Museum over something to do with that old saw of a story: "Death by Moonlight", a program about the bombing of Germany which incidentally aired on CBC in the early 1980s and clearly still weighs heavily on Ken's mind.

Ken has also been a busy-bee tackling the thorny and difficult issue of immigration, (we shouldn't have any because none of 'them' speak English and our sewage facilities are inadequate).

Our other intrepid and regular writer is a weird Christian guy who writes 8 column missives about sin while denouncing Catholicism, as well as advising people on the horrors and perversion of same sex marriage (which apparently is causing a Decline and Fall of civilization of Roman heights) These letters are inveritably ended by long nonsensical rants about how Islam converts people through violence; this method apparently being favoured by Muslims instead of utilizing the strategy of repeated long winded and annoying letters to the editor to the Orangeville Citizen and Banner.

Yet between Ken and crazy Christian guy, the papers do manage to feature a number of off the cuff letters wherein individual citizens weigh in again on the dreaded "median" (See previous posting - "Orangeville Median Wars").

In fact the median is so divisive that the local election turned on this very issue. An even more right wing council than the previous one (if that is in fact possible) was elected to stop "out of control spending". Note the "out of control spending" was spent on things like replacing this bridge in the middle of town that was about to fall down and take cars and pedestrians with it into the drink as well as repaving dangerous sidewalks which resembled the surface of the Moon. But I digress, my views no doubt tainted by my spendthrift NDP ways.

In any event the "median" has attracted even greater opposition than when I last wrote about it mid construction. Now it is completed.

THE MEDIAN

There are in fact three separate medians which run up the main drag.

MEDIAN ONE

The first median is situated at the entrance to the town and sits atop a blind hill. This placement has required, for crash safety reasons, the pasting all over the median's concrete body, giant reflective warning stripe stickers, the kind you find on your track shoes or bike. This adds an edge of greater strangeness to the grey median shell which is reminiscent of the 'Fuehrer bunker'.

To add to town outrage, no one appears to be utilizing the small benches set in said median, no doubt potential park goers worry about being creamed by a car plowing up the blind hill.

MEDIAN TWO

Next on the list of complaints: the "Santa Claus Parade". I have previously advised readers that the 'parade' consists of small children who sit in ordinary winter coats situated in the back of dirt splattered pick-up trucks and wave at people. This event was apparently ruined by the medians. In other times the pick-up trucks would drive cavalierly down the centre of the street, however not so now.

MEDIAN THREE

The median that broke the back of Orangevillians was the third, unused concrete shell. It sat empty some two years after being started and was being utilized by local skateboard miscreants to ascend up and then down into the path of your oncoming car from the body of the concrete bowl.

M3 was completed in mid-December 2006 and sports a lovely "water feature": a sculpture of a mill/water wheel from which liquid flows. It apparently represents the grist Mill which stood a block away and was demolished in the 1960s. In the mill's place sits the bridge that was falling down and had to be replaced, thus wasting taxpayer money.

THE STING

So the final phase of the median was opened. That night, sometime after 3 am (so police sources indicate) vandals came and put a bottle of bubble bath into the "mill wheel/water feature". Thus as morning broke, Orangevillians found that the main drag resembled the set of an Esther Williams swim film: water and lovely bubbles lightly floating across the road like Champagne at a 1920s soiree.

The next night vandals again struck! More dishwashing liquid into the fountain and again bubbles on Broadway!

THE END

So this is Orangeville still. They closed the "mill wheel/water feature" down immediately and in the wake of the bubble-bath incidents, some downtown merchants have angrily demanded that security cameras be installed, at public expense in the few short blocks in which the medians sit; this so we can spend 'taxpayers' money' on security cameras which invade everyone's privacy, to prevent people from putting bubble bath in a bunch of medians, that everyone in town wants torn down anyway.