Our piece on U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner's defense of NPR and "Car Talk" drew out several discussions of Click and Clack, whom as true listeners know are only able to accomplish their weekly bout of lucidity with the help of dozens of unappreciated staff whose jobs are now as shaky as the engineering in a Lucas solenoid. The better part of "Car Talk" tend to be the stories that seem to go nowhere then end up somewhere, like CSUL provided in his comment on Margaret Alverson's runaway Toyota
I don't live far from Chico. Lake County is my hometown to be exact. Both are a stones throw from Sacramento. When I was in High School, I went to Chico every year for the Band Festival. The CSU lies directly in the center of town so there are a lot of college kids running about. The festival is usually on Saint Patrick's Day or the day after so it's funny this news popped up this morning.
Rolling in as a high school kid was always a sight. The bus would drive by all the fraternities and if you were lucky, you would see a ton of kids drinking and smashing stuff, running around or passed out. It was an experience for us young country kids (Lake County is hidden pretty well, surrounded by mountains with four twisting roads going in; two to U.S. 101, one to Napa, and one to Interstate 5).
Anyway, as we walked through town before we played, we would walk by all the bars and see all the kids drinking. Chico is the baby brother to California's party school. Obviously, UCSB is up there. when people say Chico, they usually pronounce it "SSSchtii- CO," or you make the sound of a beer can opening and follow with a big "CO!" It is a lovely place, but like Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, where I attended school for two years, the population is mixed college kids and retirees. A lot of conflict happens with these demographics. Cal Poly has almost no parties now.
Anyway, I hope Margaret the best. Maybe she really did mix up the pedals and slam into to storefront. I choose to believe she was hammered.