Editorial March 21, 1988 Issue

"Gone on arrival"?

William E. Moody

An item from a small-town newspaper came across my desk the other day. Normally I don't think I would have expected to find something humorous in a community's weekly police log. But the first incident in the log presented one of those inexplicable little mysteries—the strange case of "a suspicious vehicle" that "kept driving into a driveway." And what's even more puzzling, the car was then observed to be "gone on arrival"!

The police report continued on from one such incident to the next. And as it did, the various accounts revealed a slice of life that, although sometimes humorous, was also rather telling. I felt as though a neighbor had opened his back door and was inviting me to look inside and see another view of what it could be like to live in the America of Norman Rockwell and white picket fences and town parks and homemade pies.

I didn't find any serious violence to speak of, no sensational crimes or government fraud. But in the numerous minor incidents that week, you could read between the lines and recognize the kind of frustrations that men and women confront almost every day in their lives.

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