Alert ! Man on Bike Path Not Doing Bike Path Things...

My wife called me the other night on her way to meet me. "There's this guy on the bike path right by the house, earlier he was just sitting there, now he's lying on his back listening to an i pod. Do you think I should call the cops." Now at this point a normal non-alarmist person, I thought about saying no, it's probably nothing. What I actually said was, "Hell yes call the cops." Reactionary? Overreacting? Maybe. Maybe not? The Duck Police Dept certainly takes care of their business. Their business just tends to be a little more routine than say, the LAPD. You can read the blotter. DUI, drunk in public, public nuisance etc. We do have an unfortunate amount of pedestrian/cyclist interaction with motor vehicles. Actually we had a brutal, fatal hit and run a couple of years ago. But suffice it to say, booze, cars, fireworks and rudeness are the normal fair. Once we met for dinner, I asked my wife if she indeed called the police. She did, and the duty officer's response to her query got me thinking. He proudly reported, "yes ma'am I saw that gentleman and he did look mildly suspect to me, so I stopped and asked what he was up to . . . waiting for a ride. Thanks for the call though." As I muse about my town's pleasantness, and ponder frequent turmoil in the world outside it, I'm inclined to look for root causes. I think this story illustrates one: In Duck, you do appropriate things in appropriate places. Bike paths are for biking or walking. Beaches are for relaxing. Houses are for eating and sleeping. Streets are for driving etc. When you try to re-purpose a town feature, you will be noticed. There will be no waiting for a ride on the bike path, without some inquiry. We aren't huffy about it we didn't haul the kid off to jail. We just notice. And in a world where psychological research assures us that if we are getting a beating on a crowded street, it is unlikely that we will be helped by passers by, it's nice to know that here, someone would probably have already asked our assailant why he was wearing last year's Tommy Bahama before he could even think about beating our ass. OK, it's probably not that extreme. But it is pervasive. Theft is a huge problem here, especially in rental houses. It is very hard to police when contractors and rental companies are constantly scrambling to keep the newest and nicest amenities in houses. Once you see enough TV's and dining room sets on the side of the street on bulk pick-up week, you start to not notice the unauthorized individual quietly removing said items from a property. The weird thing is that Duck also doesn't feel particularly exclusive or high brow. All the restaurants are casual. There are rental houses of every stripe and price range. I don't think it's the residents either, there just aren't enough to set such a pervasive tone. I think it is what it is. A resort town. Everyone is here to have a good time. And maybe a good time is more important, or at least more dear than morality. Absorbed in our everyday lives in any other city or town, passing by someone being harmed, there is a possibility that we tell ourselves we do not understand the circumstance. Maybe we don't even notice due to our absorbtion in our day. Life is real, life is busy. We see our world through our worldview. We bend our surroundings to our purpose. People re-purpose things. Houses become meth labs, streets become protest venues. Pressure cookers are made into bombs, parks become community gardens. Cars become homes. The pulse of the world around us doing what it needs to do to get something done is intense. In a place where you go to get away from all of that, even if you carry it around with you on your smart phone the whole time you are supposed to be relaxing, there seems a desire to not re-purpose. A desire to see things at face value. Re-purposing can serve good or evil ends, but in either case it takes a critical eye to see and a critical mind to develop, and perseverance to execute. In a resort town these are not common values.