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Show Park Record Thursday, August 24, 1989 Page A9 ffioifl Sod Hit (BaDes OOP The ladies in orange BY TOM CLYDE :' Most of you commuters drive out Highway 224 to Kimball Junction and endured your season construction con-struction earlier this summer (and the summer before that, and the summer before there was not construction there.) The first phase of that is finished, and now Salt Lake City- bound traffic is collecting speeding tickets where they used to collect col-lect chipped windshields. ,' I commute the other way, out Highway 248 to 40, and so on. That has also been under construction for a while, but the new roads are on different alignments, so there really haven't been any conflicts con-flicts until just recently. Now they are tying the old roads onto the new ones, and paving the new road system around the reservoir. Between my house and Park City I have to stop for at least five different flagperson stations, and sometimes more than that. It's getting a little old. With that range of flag people to study, however, I have been able to learn quite a bit about flag person per-son technique and style. I have also begun to strike up an acquaintance with some of them. At the first stop, there is a gravel truck entering the highway every 10 minutes or so. This is pretty easy duty for a flag man. There are two people running this stop, a guy with a long pony tail who looks like he was left over when the Grateful Dead left town who does the westbound traffic and various women who take the eastbound. None of them will take a full shift with this guy. ; When the going gets slow, he cranks up the stereo in his Camero and spends the time between truck crossings dirty dancing with his "SlowStop" signs on the shoulder of the road. It's kind of like American Bandstand reduced to the sizzle of the town of Francis. He tends to get bored or hot, or both, and spins his sign around by rubbing rubb-ing his hands back and forth on the handle. It's a little hard to know what is happening with the sign twirling like that. : At the next stop, where the same trucks turn off the exciting road to haul gravel to a new road, there are two ladies in their 40s. One of them has a serious Diet Pepsi habit, and always has a Big Gulp plugged in with a straw. There is no privy in sight, and I don't know if she has amazing capacity, capaci-ty, or if they get regular breaks to drive back to town. She doesn't seem too worried about traffic. She's done this for a long time, and hopes that on the next job she can get promoted to driving the detour pilot car. That's pretty easy duty, but you have to have connections with management to get that one. ; Maybe because of her lack of concern, her east-bound east-bound partner takes it all pretty seriously. She doesn't just tell traffic to stop, she pleads with them. She spins her sign to "Stop" then waves, Siid in facial expressions" that you could lip-read from Mars, tells you to slow down, then stop. She is genuinely concerned about the safety of her traffic. She wanted to be an actress, but things just didn't work out. She must be kind of new on the job, a least she has the smallest cooler. I think that is a mark of seniority. The longer they have been at it, the bigger their coolers. Highway 40 is the most interesting part of the trip because there are days when it just isn't there. One day it will be right where it has always been. The next day there is nothing but a hole so deep that if you fell in, you could starve before you hit bottom. There are several flag people here, and they all have assistant flag people who work their way back to the end of the traffic to warn the next car to stop. There is a woman here who has really gotten into it. She started out in June kind of stiff and frightened, as well she might be, trying to stop oil tankers going 90 mph downhill with nothing more than her "Stop" sign and an orange vest for protection. 1 Over the summer, though, she has lightened up. The traffic doesn't bother her much. She has a new collection of different colored sun glasses, wearing the red ones one day and the green the next. She tries to match people to lost hubcaps when things are slow. My theory on her is that she raised six children alone while working as a nurse in a big city back East. When the last of the little ones left home, she packed it all in and decided to live the life of a nomadic flag lady, and see the West. She travels from highway project to highway project, living in a VW camper. There are brief romantic encounters with equipment operators or forest rangers, but she is a gypsy at heart. When this project is finished, she's off to the next one, with no looking back. Someday, she will. write a great novel about her life on the road. At least, that's my version from watching her while stuck in traffic backed up all the way to Duchesne. It's a regular soap opera, acted out right there on the shoulder of the highway. There is another one who seems to have a training train-ing deficiency. She forgets to turn the sign around. While the sign reads "Slow" she is throwing her body in front of moving cars trying to get them to stop. Other times, the sign will be held sideways, so all you can see is the edge of it, and try to guess from the expression on her face whether you can proceed safely, or are about to be run over by earth-moving equipment weighing 50 tons. She also likes to test brakes and reaction time by turning turn-ing the sign to "Stop" about a nano-second before the earth mover roars through the intersection. Her personal life is a mess. It's bad enough that the flag people are taking so much of my day, but they are beginning to appear in my dreams, too. Every now and then, I will have a dream filled with women wearing fluorescent fluores-cent orange plastic vests. One night, they all got together and sang the "Anvil Chorus" holding their "StopSlow" signs instead of spears and rhythmically pounding eight-pound hammers on the lids of their plastic coolers. Other times, their t signs say things besidesondStS"" By October, we are supposed to be on the new roads, and the flag people will have moved on to other detours. Although I won't miss the inconvenience inconve-nience of stopping five times on the way into town, it will be kind of hard to see them go. It will be like having a whole bunch of old friends move away at once. Good luck, ladies and watch the traffic. It's dangerous out there. Sunnimiimifltt tJxd Siraimniiimfitt IIWili'lMWilU"' I'lTIIE'V)1 W-ufrilJIIHTl'l7W K-Mart vote spurs recall Fish department. Jay Lawson, chief of game, said the practice has little effect in the scheme of game management. manage-ment. "As far as I know, we do not view the practice as having a significant impact," he said. Angry Jackson residents have initiated a drive to recall two town councilmen and Mayor Sam Clark following their vote to allow construction of a 86,000-square-foot K-Mart. The three attached a list of 21 conditions which included includ-ed smaller buildings, tasteful building materials and specific sign and landscaping requirements. But, the conditions failed to appease residents. : The signature drive is spearheaded by county resident Frannie Huff, who is trying to find 700 registered city voters to join her in recalling the city officials. But, according ac-cording to city attorney Dave Larson, even if she does it will have no effect. "There's no such thing as a recall" under Wyoming law, said Larson. Huff countered that her attorney and a second consulted con-sulted for his opinion both say the state does allow a recall. "We're going to get 700 signatures and let the judge decide," she said. , The three officials were blase about the recall drive. One, Mike Lance, had even added his own signature to the petition. Mayor Clark said he didn't think he would be recalled even if the 700 signatures were collected. "Given the same information I had, given the 21 conditions, condi-tions, I think I voted the same way the majority of the town would have voted," he said. Lance and Clark both said they felt the recall was an bverreaction and were confident the voters would not evict them over a single issue. Salting under fire - A practice some consider unsportsmanlike is nonetheless popular in hunting elk in the Teton Wilderness, a recent survey showed. Of the 14 wilderness outfitters who responded to the survey, half said they used block or crystal salt to bring the elk out into the open. The animals are "held" by the salt in a spot where they can be easily shot. Although staff in the Bridger-Teton National Forest have prepared a position paper which says salting may be inconsistent with wilderness management as spelled out in the Wilderness Act, it is legal. And, the practice apparently predates the Act. In defense of the practice, outfitter Donald Turner said it was either hunting elk in the wilderness using salt, or taking clients to an area known as the "Hayfields" where elk were shot In a "firing line." "What do you think is more sporting?" asked Turner. , Other support came from the Wyoming Game and THE Xit TRAIL $36 to ski Vail Vail Associates have followed the lead of their fellow Colorado resorts by raising daily lift ticket prices to $36. Last year, it cost $35 to ski a day at Vail. The company announced it would keep pass prices the same for the fourth year in a row. An unrestricted season pass will cost $1,100; a community season pass, $725; and a merchant season pass, $625 if purchased before Nov. 17. In commenting on its reason for keeping season passes the same price, Mike Shannon, president of Vail Associates cited the "tremendous job" the community performed in serving the tourists at Vail and Beaver Creek. "We wanted to hold our prices as a reward for a record season and as a thank you for the excellent services ser-vices they are providing," Shannon said. Bucks exit Tahoe Local dollars are flowing out of the Lake Tahoe area, according to a study commissioned by the North Lake Tahoe Economic Steering Committee. Residents spend very little money In their home towns of North Shore, Kings Beach and Truckee, found the study. Instead, nearly 83 percent of residents buy their clothes in Reno, Carson or Sacramento. Ninety percent purchase their furniture and appliances, 55 percent their gifts, 62 percent their sporting goods find 87 percent their home electronics in these metropolitan areas as well. Residents said the shops in the local area did not carry the items they needed, and 77 percent said they would like to see more attention to local needs. But, despite customer dissatifaction, residents said they did not want bigger stores or more small shops. .. The survey also accumulated some statistics on the 572 respondents. For instance, it found Tahoe City is the largest employment area. The median income of full-time residents in Tahoe City is $53,000. ANNOUNCES Early Bird Specials $5.95 from 5-7 p.m. For the benefit of members and their guests 649-5869 Located at the Shadow Ridge Resort Hotel 50 Hotel Rooms Available Nightly at $34.95 Single or double occupancy through November 30th, 1989. PARK ClTV U'm CASSiors 1 NT "'EX "O'H IMPiRi AVt I I PAH AVl j ' 5T Located at the base of the Park City Ski Area For hotel reservations call 649-4300 I ..... y j n . i '"' ' ' ";' ; f 'I 7 f ; sZZ .- I'M f -""V 1 ;- Do You Want to List Your Property or Sell It? Not all Ijomes sell yours slxnihl! Have a Certified Residential Specialist (CRS) Show you tlje difference! JIM LEA, CRS Preferred Properties 1647 Shortline (801)649-0110 |