You can’t make people use streets they have no reason to use. You can’t make people watch streets they do not want to watch. Safety on the streets by surveillance and mutual policing of one another sounds grim, but in real life it is not grim. The safety of the street works best, most casually, and with least frequent taint of hostility or suspicion precisely where people are using and most enjoying the city streets voluntarily and are least conscious, normally, that they are policing.
Street lights can be like that famous stone that falls in the desert where there are no ears to hear. Does it make a noise? Without effective eyes to see, does a light cast light? Not for practical purposes.
What's that big electrical cord that also connects the ship to the dock? It's not a power cord to run machinery aboard ship; it's a grounding strap, to prevent sparks from static electricity. Something else you're sure to notice on a tanker is a big warning sign about the fire hazard. Frederick Allen, the editor of American Heritage of Invention & Technology, has remarked that all tankers seem to be named No Smoking.
“Can I ask you one more question?”
“Sure.”
“Have you already decided on the next barn to burn?”
This caused him to furrow up wrinkles between his eyes; then he inhaled audibly through his nose. “Well, yes. As a matter of fact, I have.”
I sipped the last of my beer and said nothing.
“A great barn. The first barn really worth burning in ages. Fact is, I went and checked it out only today.”
“Which means, it must be nearby.”
“Very near,” he confirmed.
I walked around with a map, penciling in X’s wherever there was a barn or shed. For the next three days, I covered four kilometers in all four directions. Living toward the outskirts of town, there are still a good many farmers in the vicinity. So it came to a considerable number of barns—sixteen altogether.
I carefully checked the condition of each of these, and from the sixteen I eliminated all those where there were houses in the immediate proximity or greenhouses alongside. I also eliminated those in which there were farm implements or chemicals or signs that they were still in active use. I didn’t imagine he’d want to burn tools or fertilizer. That left five barns.
Every morning, I still run past those five barns. Not one of them has yet burned down. Nor do I hear of any barn fires. Come December, the birds strafe overhead. And I keep getting older. Although just now and then, in the depths of the night, I’ll think about barns burning to the ground.