Formidabuilding

I’m sitting here staring at the City/County Building.

It’s not a pleasant destination.

The wind howls down 10th Street and every single person waiting to cross K Street looks like they’d rather be anywhere else.

Parking is atrocious. Fighting to parallel park in a spot on the street or giving in and paying for one in the lot a block north: neither one is fun.

The traffic down 9th Street always slows a bit there, the sight of all of those police cars parked out back reminds every driver that they ought to be following the speed limit, and for a moment, makes all of them wonder what the speed limit is.

Some, though, are slowing down to turn into that driveway, headed for the metal mailbox which is waiting to recieve the orange envelope that they found on their windshield that day they thought they could get away with putting only a dime in the parking meter when they knew that they were going to be gone a quarter’s worth of time.

Inside, there’s an office on the first floor where you can wait in line with a stack of property tax forms and a check to pay for them.

And in a tiny room, tucked in the back corner of an upper floor, there’s an office which you can make your way to in order to show your vehicle’s registration after getting a warning for speeding at that one spot in David City where the speed limit goes from 55 to 25.

It’s a necessary place, the City/County Building. It sits, solidly formidable, ignoring the foot and vehicle traffic rushing around it.

Formidabuilding.