Letter to the Editor

Your View: two views from 10/14

Monday, October 14, 2002

Editor's Note: This letter was submitted following the death of a Sikeston man at a Burlington Northern Railroad Crossing, three miles south of Morley.

Was this in so I can look the crossing up on the FRA data base?

I remember distinctly last weekend the Missouri railroad administrator saying if people would "stop, look and listen" they wouldn't have a problem. She had no answer when I asked, "Where the hell are the stop signs then?" referring to the Mickey Mouse cross-bucks (yield) signs which, if this is a state highway, the speed limit is probably 50 mph so the sight distance triangle required starts like 100 yards before the tracks and the driver needs to see like 175 feet for every 10 mph the train is going.

The crossing has the wrong traffic control sign it sounds like to me. How do you yield to what you can't see?

Robert Pines Sullivan

Mr. Jensen, I appreciated your editorial on the "trash" left behind the Cotton Carnival Parade. You were right on and I also wondered what kind of people could just walk off and leave such a mess. They certainly have absolutely no respect for this community or their fellow man.

Along these same lines, let me tell about a trash problem I and many other citizens of Sikeston have. It is dumped in my yard almost every day and, like the parade trash, it leaves an everlasting ugly impression to everyone that sees it. I'm talking about "SpeakOut."

Mr. Jensen, how can you be so bold in lashing out about trash in and along our streets, trash that can be picked up and discarded, but openly support, print and profit from a trash such as SpeakOut. Unfortunately, the SpeakOut trash cannot be cleaned up so easily. It is spread openly in the coffee shops, beauty shops, barber shops and Sunday school classes. It is scattered throughout town leaving an ugly mark every place it goes.

Mr. Jensen, you asked in your article, "Who could do such a thing?" What kind of people are these people? I suspect they are the same kind of people that wait anxiously every day for the trash to be delivered to their front yard.

As you have said so many times in the past, "Let's be accountable, let's clean up our community, let's put some pride back in Sikeston." Mr. Jensen, it's time to put up or shut up. Throw away SpeakOut and fill that space with more of your thoughts and comments. You are far more talented than you give yourself credit for.

Go for it!

(Name withheld for fear of angry mob that reads SpeakOut and throws their trash in the streets)