We learned last night the true nature of Semmes Avenue –
once the heart of our neighborhood, now just a corridor slicing through it.
It’s Christmas time, so we had a group of children and
parents going caroling – not a radical, new subversive transgression; something
that probably has happened in our neighborhood every year since it was
built. But – we started at a house on
the south side of “the Avenue” and were going to sing at several houses on the
north side as well.
Crossing the street with children is rough. Crossing with about 20 children, from 2 to 10
is a nightmare.
We could only make half the trip at a time – to the thin
median strip (one child had to be quickly yanked by the hood to keep from
stepping over.
We got two cars to stop to let us make the second half of
the journey – but a driver in the left lane must have irritated by the brief
pause, rolled into the right lane and ploughed into the back of one of the
stopped cars. (Thankfully that car had
good brakes or something, did not roll forward into the kids.)
Neither of the drivers was injured fortunately, and several
neighbors ran out to help.
It was pointed out that there was no crosswalk there (there
is not one for blocks and blocks and blocks across Semmes) and that drivers
don’t expect to slow down, and cars have the right of way. Well, that’s true.
But that needs to change.
Semmes Avenue used to be the heart of the neighborhoods
along it. Woodland Heights was built
hand in hand with a trolley line linking it to downtown (transit oriented
development version 1.) There were shops
and businesses lining the street, and people from both sides met in the middle
to ride the trolley (I believe that is the origin of the median strip, and of
the concrete power poles down the middle.)
Now the two sides seem remote, like different
neighborhoods.
Our neighborhoods need their heart back.
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