Wednesday, 9/27

I don't think there are any more around. I think they've gone extinct.

As I mentioned yesterday, I spent almost the entire very hot weekend outdoors. And one of the things I did was to follow up on a blog from a few weeks ago, the blog where I wrote about how one of the few remaining “Don't Spit on the Sidewalk; Spit on the Side” sidewalk slabs was torn out when they were adding a bus lane at Graveraet. I said at the time I'd have to look and see if the others that I knew of were still around, and I'm sad to say that I think they're all gone.

8-(

Now, I'm not talking about all of those “Don't Spit on the Sidewalk” imprints you see all over the city. They're all still there. But there were four unique ones around, four that had an extra line on them that said “Spit on the Side”. It's a line that added extra context as to why we have those sidewalk imprints in the first place (because in ye olde days gentlemen needed to be told to spit their tobacco juice somewhere other than the sidewalk, so the hems of the dresses worn by fashionable ladies would remain tobacco-juice free). Now, it appears those four are gone.

Aside from the one in front of Graveraet there was one near the corner of Fourth & Mather; this one, specifically--

Which isn't there any more. There was another on Adams Street in south Marquette. I walked up & down the entirety of the street—both sides—Saturday, and couldn't find it. I may have missed it, because I didn't remember the exact location, but I swear I looked at every sidewalk slab the length of the street, and I didn't see it. The same for the fourth slab, which was somewhere on the east side of High Street. After checking out the length of the street Sunday, I have to conclude that that one is gone, too.

Sigh.

I realize these are strange things to mourn, but someone needs to do it. Like I said a few weeks ago, it's great that Marquette is constantly reinventing and reconstructing itself. I wouldn't have it any other way. But during that re-invention shouldn't we remember what came before? I mean, after the disastrous “Great Sandstone Purge” of the late 1960s Marquette managed to save and re-invent the remaining sandstone buildings around town. And while I realize slabs of sidewalk aren't quite as impressive (or as visible) as the Old Savings Bank Building or Old City Hall, shouldn't someone remember why they were stamped the way they were stamped?

I mean, someone other that dorky history geeks?

Okay; I'll shut up about sidewalk slabs for now. That's the price of progress, I guess, the same way that the city's original wooden sidewalks were removed in the early 1900s to make way for the stamped cement ones, and the same way that the ones that replaced the stamped walks will one day be removed themselves and replaced by the moving sidewalks or or solar power generating walks of the future.

It's just a shame they won't say “Spit on the Side”.

(jim@wmqt.com), dork.