BTW, I grew up in an area that was in the cusp of both Irvington and Brightwood ~ rather poles apart when it came to intellectuals, engineers, movers and shakers and hard working railroadmen, and at times, criminals and cops. A cousin was actually John Dillinger's wife for a time ~ his father lived across the alley from my grandparents.
You've got wonderful stories there... thanks for sharing... Maybe it's one of the things freepers have in common - we lived lives that forced us out of 'easy' ways of seeing things....
An example ~ there was a time in recent American history where traffic light systems were expensive and you'd almost have to have someone killed at an intersection to justify their installation. Roughly, in that period, a human life was literally worth a traffic light.
Through passage of time and advances in technology the light systems have gotten much cheaper. With that the highway engineers have begun a practice of installing them long before they even do traffic flow studies that will tell them what they need to know to time the lights.
When it comes to Freerepublic there's an age difference in those who appreciate traffic light systems and those who despise them ~ and it almost looks like the difference between Conservatism and Libertarianism.
The real difference is one of experience and age. I was the cause of a traffic light getting installed ~ a railroad crossing light in fact ~ we slid down an icy hill into the path off a speeding freight train! Nobody died but the railroad couldn't afford too much of that sort of thing ~ so in went the light.
In contrast, we have had folks here arguing that the yellow light timing is too short for them to stop at intersections so they hate the red light runner photo systems! They simply haven't been T-boned yet! It's coming though.
Age and experience ~ and a willingness to recognize that. Something you don't see over among the leftwingtards. Not only do they not have moral codes, they have no experience worth having.