Editor: Senior proms and graduation parties are in season.
So are drinking, driving and highway tragedies involving teenage celebrants.
Every year at this time newspapers across the country carry the tragic headlines about the teens, the proms, the graduations and the crashes. High school graduation and senior proms are great moments in life, and drinking and driving are the first temptations to celebrate.
For heaven's sake, kids, if you party, stay off the highways. Put your willpower to a test, the challenge of adulthood, and say no before getting into a car with a partying driver.
Besides, the other car could as well be the partying car, and you could be the victim.
I say this from a personal experience I shall never forget. Fortunately, years ago I had the willpower to say no when several of my friends asked me to leave a party.
Within minutes after they left, I heard sirens. I could sense the tragedy of those sirens as I thought of the four who had just left me. One was killed, two seriously crippled and the driver's name blackened for life.
In a few weeks I will be attending the 60th reunion of that graduating class in 1944, and I have always wondered what would have happened had I said yes and gone along. Who would have broken the news to my parents as I had to do to console the mother of my friend who was killed?
As I even write this sad memory of life, I am in tears. I plan on going to my reunion knowing that my best friend will not be there. He never had the chance to be at the first reunion.
Have fun, kids. This is a great time in life for you. But be smart and be around for the many other great moments you will have in life.
I would hope that all of the high schools would enlarge this message and have it posted at all of the high school senior celebrations or in the hands of the parents, as I doubt that too many would take the time to really digest this message in this newspaper.
-- Bruno L. Kearns, New Port Richey
How much water is wasted when Aloha flushes out lines?
Editor: Nearly every morning between 7:30 and 8:30, an Aloha pickup truck pulls into our cul-de-sac and begins hooking up a pipe and hose to a water line. The person then opens a valve to pump water through a meter mounted to the truck bed and flushes water into the sewer, which lasts 15 to 45 minutes each time.
The person tests the water several times and when satisfied with the reading, records some information into a log, including the meter usage reading of our good quality water.
My question for Stephen Watford is: If Aloha's water quality is so great, then why is it necessary to flush water lines nearly every day?
I am led to believe that the reason for poor water quality was an issue inside the homes with copper pipes and not Aloha's problem. With how many trucks and other sites does this occur each day? How much of our good quality water is wasted each day to just flush lines for no reason?
-- Paul Wells, Trinity
[Last modified May 2, 2004, 01:05:38]
