Why Does Cheyenne Hate Streetlights?
There is a weird thing I’ve noticed about the capital city. Why Does Cheyenne hate streetlights?
As near as I can tell, outside of downtown, and various big-box parking lots, there are no streetlights in Cheyenne. Not traffic lights, I’m talking about the lights that make the night not dark. You know, because people don't have eyes like a cat.
The street I live on doesn’t have them. The street that goes from the main road to my street doesn’t have them.
In one very unscientific survey of Fox Farm Road, Collage Drive and other various streets that Google Maps mispronounces, there are a total of zero streetlights between where I live and Walmart, the place in town I visit the most.
This is especially vexing because it’s the time of year where the sun is at it’s laziest. Can you stay awake past four please, the sun! Are you the sun or a bear? Quit your hibernating. I have to go to the store for the one thing that I need to make dinner with.
Anyways, I have a couple of theories about Cheyenne’s streetlight deficiently.
First, it could be the influence of hippies. I spend a few months in Santa Fe, New Mexico a few years back. I know the wrath of the loudmouth hippie. They don’t like people that wear perfume, they use soap that doesn’t work, and those goofballs won’t shut-up about ‘light pollution.’
Look, I choose to live in a city for lots of reasons. One of them is that I don’t want to live in nature. Nature is dirty, cold, and dark. I live in town to not be dirty, cold, or in the dark.
This is Wyoming, if you have that strong a hankering for the wilderness, pack up your overpriced sage oil and drive a mile in any direction. There you go, all the darkness you need. I don’t want to commune with nature while I make a run to the store at 10:00 PM.
If you hate streetlights that much, then get working on Star Trek teleporter technology. That way I can achieve my life-long dream of going places and not having to move a whole bunch. Then you can have all the dark streets you want.
My other theory about why there is a lack of streetlights in Cheyenne, and I think the most likely reason: Vampires. Now, here me out.
I think that Cheytown must have a large voting block that has for decades, blocked any streetlight-based legislation. I don't know if it is a large vampiric population that loves rodeo and has settled in Wyoming; or if this is the effect of a vampire-aligned lobbying group. But, I'm almost positive that this is an issued rooted in the vamper world.
Look, I get it, I know all about the Dracula lifestyle. I've read all of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. Well, not all of them. I gave up after Blood and Gold. We get it, Ann, they wear beautiful clothes, I don’t need fifty pages describing a hundred-year-old button. Plus, I watched all of The Strain, and Cassidy is my third favorite character on Preacher (Team Tulip!). So, I'm sensitive to the lighting issues that our undead citizens have to deal with.
In fact, if any Draculas want to hang out, I’m down, as long as I can BYOB. I’m sure you understand. Fake Klingon Blood Wine is about as close as I can get.
I know that the city can work out a compromise. I bet with the advances in LED technology, there are light bulbs out there that can light up the night for us non-vamps, and not burn the flesh of our more Nosferatu-ish citizens. Or maybe we could offer something like free sunglasses and parasols for those that do their business at night.
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