Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 235, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 October 1914 — HAPPENINGS in the BIG CITIES [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HAPPENINGS in the BIG CITIES

Tall Man From Inkster Suffers Geometric Jag DETROIT, MICH.—A tall man from Inkster came into the city the other night and got all mixed up with the traffic lines. When he stepped off an interurban ear, he found the street marked off In squares, oblongs, semi*

circles, rectangles, parallelograms, obtpse and acute triangles and right angle triangles. Balancing himself carefully on the hypotenuse of one of the latter, he spoke to a policeman as follows: "Mister, I don’t get into the city very often and I hope you’ll pardon my ignorance. What I want to know is this: Why has Detroit become so subdivided as to its main thoroughfares? Is there going to be a parade or just a game of tennis?”

The policeman said it was nothing to get facetious about. “Formerly,” the policeman continued, “you could cross Woodward’avenue and not know at just what point of the road you were going to be hit. Now we have the pedestrian right where we want him. By herding him in the prescribed limits laid out by these pavement paintings, it sort of concentrates our accident*. Now, the pedestrian can get hit harder and with a more reasonable degree of certainty." _e The policeman explained that by walking within the limits of an elongated parallelogram, you eventually get across Woodward avenue. The lines do not entirely remove the certainty of being struck by any one of the following: Automobiles, street cars, motorcycles, trucks, horses, circus parades, elephants, fish flies and other night-blooming insects. They are supposed merely to minimize the danger. ' Folks are gradually becoming reconciled, to walking by rule. Lots of people who come downtown at night think It’s a game. The other night a man tried to walk one of, the lines on the campus to prove he still posseted mental poise. Ah ambulance later collected him and carried him away.