I’m still in a daze over Dade Days in Tallahassee. I just returned from an exciting and fun-filled trip to Tallahassee for what is called “Dade Days,” a gathering of South Florida municipalities in Tallahassee, organized by the Florida League of Cities, with the purpose of meeting with and talking to senators and representatives of our respectful towns.
The excitement began when I had to awake at 4:30 a.m. to be sure that I was on time for our chartered flight and to get my traditional neck tie. As soon as we arrived in Tallahassee we began going to various meetings and gatherings so that we could listen to a bunch of speeches. Politicians do that you know.
Our main purpose, of course, was actually to meet with some of the individuals responsible for bringing bills before the House and Senate that might possibly help our individual cities and towns. I frankly don’t know how effective our visits might be with the exception of one senator who referred to one of my requests as the “Ernie Bill.”
This involved having the legislature tell Miami-Dade County that the towns within its control would be allowed jurisdiction of the county roads that pass through our individual areas, which would allow the use of golf carts, something many people have been demanding but forbidden by county rules. We shall see what happens with this one.
Another point we tried to make was to reinforce the texting-while-driving laws so that the police do not necessarily have to catch you robbing a bank, speeding, changing lanes, etc., before issuing you a ticket for being totally distracted while either texting or talking on your cell phone. Some of the people we spoke to likened it to turning around and whacking your kids when they misbehave in the back seat and they certainly wouldn’t want to ban that.
I don’t know about you but I usually start out with the age-old expression of “don’t make me come back there!” I did have to agree that putting makeup on, something I seldom do, could be very distracting as well and that also could be punishable by a fine. We shall see where this goes in the future.
We did have a luncheon the next day in which it seems everyone but me received an award for something or other. Perhaps one day I will receive one just for being the only person attending who didn’t get an award. Stay tuned for this one
I was quite excited about a recently passed bill that would allow college students to bring their weapons into the classroom just in case someone attacked the school. What lame-brain thought this one up?
Can you just imagine everyone in the class pulling out their weapons at the same time and firing at would-be intruders? We have thoroughly trained police officers who actually go to school to learn how to react in these situations and yet every day you read about someone being shot by one of these offices for apparently no logical reason, so imagine a classroom full of kids fully armed and dealing with a situation with which they have no understanding.
At least they have solved my problem of going-away gifts for my grandchildren when they enter college. I will simply buy my two granddaughters Glock pistols and my grandson a Tech 9 machine gun.
If you are interested in doing the same thing the government is considering having a tax-free day in which to purchase guns and ammunition, scheduled possibly for July 2 so that at least you will have some guns to shoot into the air during the holiday. I wish I were making all of this up “in which case you could say” boy that Ernie sure is funny,” but this is the truth!
After several days of running from office to office, building to building, we finally got to the airport to take our chartered flight home to Miami. It was supposed to leave at 5 p.m. Something seemed to be holding up everything, flight attendants were running back and forth in the aisles and the plane never started. It seemed there was some difficulty determining how many passengers there were.
My thought would’ve been to count the empty seats and deduct that from the maximum capacity of the aircraft. Evidently this was not quite scientific enough so the pilot decided to read off the list of passengers and have each one shout out “here” which was passed down the aisle to the pilot for some form of checklist.
Needless to say this didn’t work and I kept saying to myself wouldn’t it be wonderful if they had computers to determine who was actually on the flight. I say this facetiously because I had to go through two checkpoints myself to check my name off on a list of passengers.
Why the pilots of this aircraft didn’t have access to this still mystifies me and I expect to be writing a letter soon to the CEO of Swift Air LLC airlines hoping for an explanation. Several hours later after takeoff they did reward us with our choice of water or Diet Coke and handed us a tiny bag of some form of crackers. Naturally this was all it took to assuage the anger of a planeload of triple “A” personality politicians. Good job, Swift Air Airlines.
The next “Dade Days” will take place in January 2016 so I will not have to wait another year to enjoy this wonderful escape from my normal peaceful day-today life.
