Reading, Writing, Laughing, Thinking...........

I was able to access a few journals this morning.  Ahh, it feels so good to catch up with some of my buddies.  This computer glitch is driving me nuts. I will be patient.  It's almost over.

Jeannette at Jeannette's Jottings told a very cute story this morning.  She refers back to a much more innocent time when things were handled without much to do.  As I read her entry it made me think of something that happened here about 18 months ago.

There is a Chevron gas station on a busy corner about two miles from our home.  Across the street is a shopping center with a grocery store, a drug store, a dry cleaners, a fast food restaurant, and other little stores typical of a center like that.  About 1/2 mile to the west is an elementary school.  I'm telling all of this so you can get a picture of what that area is like.

So one morning around 9:30, a customer notices a leather bag sitting next to one of the pumps.  There are no other cars around and this raises all kinds of suspicions in his mind so he notifies the clerk who works there.  I guess they decide that it is a dangerous situation and they notify the local police.  Two police cars are sent to the scene.  They assess the situation  and decide to call in the bomb squad.  While the bomb squad is being deployed, 25 other police cars rush to the area and close off all streets around the gas station.  They tell the school to keep all the children inside until they get an all clear.  They will not let anyone into or out of the shopping center.  They close a freeway off ramp so drivers cannot exit onto this avenue. 

At 1:30, they still had not determined whether or not it was an explosive devise.  All the employees of the gas station had been evacuated to the shopping center.  In the process of the quick evacuation, someone left a hot plate on and it ignited a fire inside the mini-mart at the station.  Smoke starts pouring out of the little store but because the police haven't cleared the 'bomb' they won't let the fire department in to put out the fire so it destroys the mini-mart.

The fire brings out a news helicopter and the police helicopter.  A local TV station sends a truck which has to park down the road but the reporter and camera man get withing 100 yards of the 'action'.

The local high school gets out at 2:30 and there are about 200 high school students milling around on the far side of the freeway because the police won't let them cross the bridge to get to their neighborhoods.  At 3:00 the jr. high gets out and the same situation happens there.  School authorities were able to keep most of those kids on school grounds which prevented problems.

Finally around 4:00 in the afternoon, a robot is brought in from somewhere and it drags the leather case into an open area and in the process it opens up, spilling papers and a lap- top computer onto the ground.   WHAT????  All of this for a laptop computer and some paperwork? 

Down the street, worried parents are still waiting for their kids to be dismissed from the elementary school.  The little kids usually get out at 2:55 but they are in lock down.  People have been waiting to leave the shopping center all day, traffic on the freeway is backed up because the offramp is closed. 

All of that because someone left their laptop at the gas station.  Oh, my!!!  

The gas station was closed for over a year while repairs were made.  We had to drive about 5 miles to the nearest gas station  which was a pain in the, ahhhh neck....yeah, the neck.  LOL  When it finally reopened, it was cause for celebration.  They made it twice as big which is so nice because there used to be a line of cars waiting for gas quite often.

So that's the saga of the Laptop Bomb Scare.  It's easy to make fun of it because it turned out to be nothing.  In reality, its probably a good thing that things like this are ..taken seriously in this day and age.

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