MARK SMITH MORE COLUMNS Advertisement

Several months ago I received some telephone calls from folks with a real problem. It seems those unthinking jerks at state DOT had installed slick concrete at some road crossings. You'd have thought a major crisis was strangling the rights of our driving public.

Imagine, if you made the turn onto the intersecting road too fast, you'd actually skid. Why, a motorcyclist could go down onto the pavement. If you jammed the accelerator to go from stationary to making the turn, your tires might spin.

I'll tell you, it was enough to make my blood boil, or at least to induce a case of the uncontrollable giggles.

But I forgot, government is supposed to do what we want. Doesn't matter that what we want might not be the safest thing, or even the most convenient thing, or even the slightest bit sensible -- if we want it, it must be done. And if it's not, then government is the enemy, interested only in trampling our rights (we have a "right" to accelerate to a certain speed upon entering an intersection?) and taking all the fun out of what we, selfishly, want.

I've been across those intersections (to wit, Highway 372 and Pahrump Valley Boulevard and 372 at Red Butte) innumerable times, and amazingly, I don't skid trying to start up and cross the smooth concrete. Uncanny. How to explain? Well, probably because I try to accelerate carefully enough so that I, well...so that I don't skid.

Now, I am hearing from some folks who appear convinced that something nefarious is going on at Nellis Air Force Base. A week or so ago a Navy helicopter was clattering over Pahrump at 500 or more feet above ground level. And to add to the hazy scheme, some Air Force jets were wheeling around 4,000 and more feet above the ground.

Can you believe it? Aircraft of our own armed forces using the sky above our heads! And at night!

Just days before men, women, kids and the family dog were extolling the bravery and sacrifice of our servicemen during Memorial Day ceremonies, other red-blooded (but apparently invertebrate) Americans were nervous about our own military aircraft.

What was the problem? Well, some said Nellis AFB should have "warned" us about the maneuver, which by the way involved no munitions of any sort. Planes flew around; that's all they did.

We live in one of the most highly militarized areas outside of al-Anbar Province, what with the test site, Nellis, Area 51, Creech and the associated ranges, not to mention Fort Irwin and Twenty-Nine Palms across the line in California ... and we need a warning that military planes might be bucketing around?

Did someone imagine these might be Iraqi jets, hidden these many years, then smuggled into the U.S. bent on bombing out Rob Roberts' office (Die, infidel educator!)? Al-Qaeda aircraft, preparing to drench Terrible's Lakeside with mustard gas? Taliban aeronauts or Islamofascist pilots?

I'd like to say "of course not," but I'm not so sure. Some folks who might be a lot better off crocheting do, after all, believe the world is all a conspiracy whose aim is to kill or enslave them for God only knows what awful purposes. These are the same folks who, like a church housekeeper I met once in Jasper, Alberta, honestly thought Chinese communist troops were gathering in the Canadian Rockies, preparing to swarm down for a round of rape and pillage among the defenseless hamlets dotting the Canadian National route.

Jets crisscross the sky over Pahrump all the time, and I don't get calls telling me mysterious warplanes are leaving contrails over the house. The Mercy Air chopper takes off on a regular basis, but I don't hear anyone demanding advance notice.

In any event, a week before the maneuver Nellis actually did release a formal statement that outlined very clearly what was going to happen (It is going to happen again in October). The press people there did not, however, send us that release, and we certainly don't have time or the inclination to read all of Nellis' press handouts on the rare off-chance that one might, just possibly, involve our town.

What likely happened is simple. The bureaucracy -- and there is none more ponderous, more stumbling, more inefficient, more comically and colossally hapless than that of the U.S. military -- forgot to contact us.

Yes, Watson, evil is afoot!

And it lurks in the form of a tired, pleasant, well-trained airman who sits in an office and makes money for college and may simply have forgotten to hit the "send" button.

The horror. The horror.