Enotes

This is Dream Cruise Week. Not sure what that means, other than this is the week leading up to the Dream Cruise, down Woodward Avenue. It's also time for me to reflect on my experiences at the Cruise, which began in 1995, the brainchild of a plumber from Ferndale named Nelson House. OK, ready for my experiences? Well, back in 2003 or 2004, my family and I decided to head into Royal Oak to eat at Siam Spicy on Woodward north of 11 Mile. And we forgot that it was Dream Cruise Saturday. And we in our 1992 Mustang (I still drive it) got accidentally caught up in the Cruise as we turned north onto Woodward. People hooted and hollered at us from their roadside seats. They thought our car was part of the Cruise. Little did they know, we were wayward souls looking for some Thai food, with timing that couldn't have been worse. That's it---that's the depth of my Dream Cruising. The Dream Cruise is one of those events that I think I should give a go one of these da...

Oscar Simler, they're taking your invention and killing it -- slowly and painfully. The turn signal is moribund. As far as I can tell, it's comatose, in a vegetative state, and Dr. Kevorkian is nowhere in sight. That means there might be time for a cure, but I'm having severe doubts. Simler is the man who patented the first automobile turn signal, back in the late-1920s. When I was growing up, we called it a "blinker." Some still do. But a growing number of folks might not call it anything, since they don't seem to know that it even exists. When and why did this occur -- this slow, methodical signal-cide? What happened to cause a growing number of the driving nation to ignore one of the basic tenets of motor vehicle operation? To me, the refusal to use a turn signal is the ultimate act of "screw you". It's basically one driver telling everyone else: "You don't need to know what I'm going to do. So just wait to see for yourself -- whe...