The Farmington times. (Farmington, St. Francois County, Mo.) 1905-1926, 1918-03-22
Why Not Swat the
Sidewalk Lizard :?

WIN the approach Oh sprung,
among the other wild things which
crawl out from their hiding places
into the beautiful sunshine, is that
small town pest, the sidewalk lizard.
This creature is human, not reptilian,
and Pennington, like other towns of
its size, no doubt, has quite gang Of
them. Time was, we suspect, when
the back rooms of the saloons formed
noisome refuge for the species,
but with a saloonless Pennington, and
the booze filling-stations many miles
away, the swearing, Safeguarding,
noisy, scuffling, hell-raising animal
establishes himself on the sidewalk
apparently in the morn's early light,
and sticks there sometimes until the
roosters crow for midnight. And he
makes it unpleasant for passers-by all
of that time. He spits sour tobacco
juice all over the sidewalk, in plain
disregard OF city ordinance that ev-
erybody knows about and decent folks
observe. He swears in loud, rau-
cous voice, every other word of his
conversation being a dirty oath. He
stares impudently at passing women,
making quite audible remarks and
cracking questionable jokes about our
sisters, sweethearts and wives, so that
their sensibilities are rudely shocked,
and more than likely business houses
lose good cash trade.
The Postoffice corner is a favorite
congregating place. There you find
the sidewalk lizard, inside the lobby
and outside, black and white, day and
I ...L Inl haf Of
times it actually requires vigorous
| skirmishing to get through the gang
at all. 1t would seem that an indi-
vidual sense of decency would impel
people to shut off their loud profani-
| ty when lady is passing, but the
| sidewalk lizard seems to have no sense
of decency, or he wouldn't be a side
walk lizard. Instead Of loafing about
on the street, he would probably be
relieving the pressing need for farm
laborers by doing little work now
and then. And there are other con-
gregating spots besides the postoffice
corner. The business houses which
profit by the purchases Of these liz
ards do what they can to preserve
reasonably pure atmosphere inside,
but at the door their jurisdiction
reaches its limits, and the sidewalks
claim the overflow, with license ap-
parently unrestrained to euss and
bawl and laugh and scuffle after the
manner of the irresponsible levee-
niggers in the old steamboat days
down south in the land Of cotton.
IL seems to us that city marshal
who looked ut the thirg rightly could
remedy this evil, whether there is a
1 law that exactly covers the case or
not. An admonition from the visible
arm of the law is usually sufficient to
make drunk get in off the street, or
bcstir himself and move on if he has
trickled down into an immobile heap to
sleep it off, or the minor sins of the
| automobilists are corrected at the
sign of the appraised hand of author
! ity. So why not get after the side
walk lizards and see that they either
behave in a manner that is not Of
| fensive to passers-by who are on their
way for legitimate purposes, or give
them the move-on signal and make it
stick? This crude, small-town rough
stuff is not tolerated in the larger
| places, and every one of the careless,
loafng, loud-mouthed profanity-p
dlers knows that. He doesn't try it
in St. Louis when he's there. But he
inficts it on his home town with per-
feet composure because he knows that
so far, he can "get by with it" without
fear of even slap on the wrist. It's
time to exterBlinate the sidewalk liz
ard, and The Times hopes to see it
done effectually this spring, before