MAILBAG:The kids weren’t playing nice

The Daily Pilot had yet another anonymous editorial (“Remember the days when kids played in parks?,” July 22) from the owners of the bottomless barrels of irrelevant ink.

The Pilot doesn’t agree with the residents of the Paularino Park neighborhood, the Parks and Recreation Department and our City Council’s decision to make the park into a “passive park” and not a war zone of conflicting uses. As usual, the Pilot, way up high in their Ivory Tower, “knows best.”

How can so many residents be so wrong?

It seems they think we are back in another era, when Orange County still had orange groves and there were still bean and strawberry fields … forever.

Whatever happened to those idyllic days when kids could run and jump and roll a hoop down Main Street like Tom Sawyer?

Well, folks, the world was a much smaller place back then. Costa Mesa was “Goat Hill,” and the population here, and everywhere else, was much less.

Our city did not have to consider manufacturing open spaces; we just had them. Then the city grew out and up, and now we have something we call “infill” projects.

Where have you been Mr. or Ms. Editorial Writer, living in a remote region of Lapland?

Sadly, the government does tend to step in when the lowest common denominator rules, and by LCD I mean those who abuse every privilege of our democracy with no thought that they are not the only person in the world using that park.

So, we end up making more rules for those who do not respect those rules that keep us as comfortable as we are able to be in this age of nuclear waste, war and a burgeoning population.

This is not … about soccer, baseball, futbol or football, Frisbee, ballroom dancing, bingo or horseshoes.

This is about a small area of land that can only hold so many people. The kids in this sandbox haven’t been playing together nicely.

The sandbox is overflowing to bursting, and there ain’t no one having any fun.

Since the “kids” weren’t playing nice, the government, in the form of our Parks and Recreation Department, our City Council and the homeowners, stepped in and said enough.

The Pilot is playing fast and loose with the facts. Doing that stinks, and so did the Pilot’s editorial.

KATHLEEN ERIC

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