Life, liberty, and…..golf?

Opinion

October 31, 2012

Life, liberty, and…..golf?

Clay Mercer Cordele Dispatch The Cordele Dispatch Wed Oct 31, 2012, 05:31 PM EDT

Pinehurst — I almost hit a man driving a golf cart the other day. The surprising thing was that, at the time, I wasn’t within fifteen miles of the nearest golf course.

In fact, there’s not, to my knowledge, a golf course anywhere in Dooly County, so I have to say that I was completely unaware that someone might be driving around town in a golf cart.

Certainly, in Vienna, Georgia, residents know enough to look out for the city employees who ride around in the Gatormobile while pretending to read water meters. This was not the Gatormobile, but an actual golf cart.

After this incident, I began to keep better watch for golf carts and I have seen several, on several different occasions. Enough, in fact, to suspect that there is more than one cart being driven on city streets.

On the surface, this sounds like a good thing. Why shouldn’t an enterprising person spend several thousand dollars on a golf cart, that’s $3,795 for the electric model, to save some money on gas while running errands?

Well, let’s see. Gas is roughly $3.50 a gallon right now, so that means if you save 1,000 gallons of gas, you’ll have saved the price of the golf cart right there. So, how do you save 1,000 gallons of gas?

Uh, well, my truck gets 18 miles per gallon, so 1000 gallons of gas will take me 18,000 miles.

Vienna, Georgia, all the way from the chicken plant to the Fitzpatrick Place Housing Authority, is 2.52 miles wide.

Simple math demonstrates that if I drive from Fitzpatrick to the chicken plant and back 3,751 times, I’ll have saved enough money on gas to pay for the golf cart. That means that, if I live at Fitzpatrick and work at the chicken plant, I have to drive to work in my golf cart every day for ten years in order to save enough money to make buying the golf cart worthwhile.

If, on the other hand, I only use the golf cart to ride from Fitzpatrick back and forth to the Zippy, it will take nearly twenty years to make owning the golf cart profitable.

Now, I know there are some progressive communities in Georgia that are designed around, support, and encourage the use of golf carts. Peachtree City, near Atlanta, stands out in mind. The difference between Peachtree City and Vienna is that, in Peachtree City you don’t see golf carts on commercial streets.

Another difference between Peachtree City and Vienna is that Peachtree City has, according to their chamber of commerce, three golf courses and some 20 miles of golf cart friendly ‘paths and throughways’. Vienna doesn’t have that.

Okay, having made the point that Vienna ain’t Peachtree City, let me make another point.

The carts being driven in and around Vienna, Georgia aren’t street legal. They don’t have brake lights or turn signals, and their owners don’t pay road use taxes on them. Another problem is that children view them as ‘toys’, which to a certain extent, they are.

Maybe you missed that part about the chicken plant a minute ago, so if you did, consider it now. They use tractor-trailer trucks to haul live chickens in and haul frozen chickens out. If that’s not enough, there are log trucks and cotton module trucks coming into and through town all day long, every day.

So, instead of asking the question, “Why don’t the police ticket the people breaking the law?” let me instead ask the question, “Are we really going to wait until some child gets killed before we put a stop to it?”

Text Only

Opinion

Seizure of AP records insult to independent press
Distrust of government secrecy has been elevated to an exceptional level with the disclosure the Justice Department covertly examined two months of Associated Press phone records to determine who leaked details to the AP about a foiled terrorist plot.

May 18, 2013
Eyewitness gives account of Boston Marathon bombings
BOSTON, MA — Rushing to the streets to help runners, my eyes stared vacantly in disbelief. Is this actually happening today at The Boston Marathon?

April 27, 2013
Letter to the editor:
Dear Editor
I recently learned that an employee working for the Dooly County School System was discharged from the military because of a “personality disorder.”

April 22, 2013
Life, liberty, and…..abuse?
April is Child Abuse Awareness Month, which is a heavy burden to put on April, which is already working to promote awareness for cancer, severe weather, autism, parkinson’s disease, sexual assault, stress, sexually transmitted diseases, alcohol, and includes a ‘special’ week for volunteers.

April 18, 2013
What should have happened in the legislature during 2013
(Editor’s Note: David Pennington’s synopsis of the recent legislative session appeared in the Thursday, April 11 Cordele Dispatch. What follows is his opinion about what should have happened while the Georgia representatives and senators were in Atlanta).

April 13, 2013
The view from inside the schools
(Editor’s note: In light of recent events and accusations surrounding Wilcox County and segregated proms here is an excerpt from a posting on the home page for Wilcox County Schools).

April 8, 2013
Life, liberty, and…..the west coast?
Thankfully, just when most humor writers are looking around for material, somebody on the west coast does something stupid for us. How patriotic!

April 4, 2013
Death not a 'dead end'
This past week, a former local minister pointed out the irony of this road sign at the intersection of 8th Ave. and 1st St. in Cordele.

March 30, 2013 1 Photo
Life, liberty, and…..nudity?
A couple of weeks ago, just before the two week series of “Dancing with the Post Office Stars,” a man approached me in the bank parking lot and offered a suggestion for a column.

March 27, 2013
Life, liberty and correspondence
A couple of letters to the editor in the Cordele Dispatch caught my attention lately.

March 21, 2013
More Opinion Headlines

Opinion

Search Results

Life, liberty, and…..golf?

Site Map

Contact Us