WALLACE — Wallace's King Street, for as long as we can remember an arterial of tank trap-sized chuckholes, is now a ribbon of asphalt smooth as a baby's behind.
Watching the street dug down to near bedrock and a road prism constructed ahead of the paving, we were impressed with the courtesy of the crews involved and the military precision with which they executed their task.
Despite our entreaties, however, the capable men and women of the road-building companies did not install any speed bumps along this residential stretch, leaving us wide open to honyockery and bad road manners.
Speeding and rude driving on Moon Pass and up and down King Street are pretty easily predicted by the type of license plate affixed to the vehicle.
S- plates are, with a few glaring regular exceptions, the most courteous of the King Street/Moon Pass cruisers, although judging from the fair accumulation of empty beer cans up by the East Shoshone Water District inlet, our youth are not being schooled in the wisdom of aluminum recycling.
At the opposite end of the annoyance spectrum are bicyclists visiting our fair region from the Peoples Republic of Washington. We cannot attest to their behaviour on their bikes, but once their homage to The Environment has been paid with a good Spandex-sweaty ride, our greenie neighbours strap those bicycles onto the back of their mini-vans and come tearing down the pass and down King Street hell-bent for leather, a froth of empty plastic water bottles on their wake.
(Tempting it was a time or two this summer to draw down on the rear tires of one of these out-of-state offenders, but we're not sure a .45-caliber bullet would outrun them.)
Somewhere in the middle of the extremely irritating and generally courteous are the K- plate crowd, and the hunting, snow-catting and four-wheeling fraternities. No doubt the new pavement and its lack of tank traps won't alter their behaviours much — any more than ranting and raving at the gross offenders does.
So where does all this leave those of us who occupy King Street and watch this endless procession of recreation and purpose hustle by our houses every day? Perhaps the greatest benefit of the shiny new pavement has been in the reduction of noise. Loose mufflers and compromised undercarriages protest far less going over smooth pavement, and we can sleep more soundly for it.
