Haven’t cleaned out the old Bopp File in a while. To the uninitiated, the Bopp File is a computer file where I store all my unfinished columns, strange ideas and weird thoughts. Here’s what I’m tossing out:

I drive a Chrysler with headlights that sit low on a streamlined hood. From the front, it looks like a big ol’ dark blue, flathead catfish. My wife’s silver Malibu looks like a smiling robot.

My old 1969 Rally Sport Camaro with hideaway lights looked like “The Terminator.”

Why am I thinking about such weird stuff? Well, a recent article in Science Daily said one-third of the population associates car fronts with people or animal faces. The headlights are the eyes of course, and a grill serves as the mouth.

Researchers Truls Thorstensen and Karl Grammer at the University of Vienna believe that this identification can lead people to attribute certain personality traits or emotions to their cars. In turn, they believe that could influence driving behavior. According to their study, both men and women like “mature, dominant, masculine, arrogant, angry-looking cars.”

Maybe that explains bad St. Joseph driving.

Endangering lives?

That leads me to another article I read on the Atlantic.com Web site. This one says that stop signs and speed limit signs actually endanger lives.

The author, John Staddon, grew up in Great Britain, where apparently there aren’t as many road signs as there are in America. He claims all the signs are too distracting. And the more people look for signs and other roadside distractions, the less attentive they are to traffic conditions.

I would add cell phones to that list, too.

Staddon also said that stop signs are not eco-friendly. They’re costly and bad for the environment because stop-and-start driving uses more gas and vehicles pollute most when pulling from a stop.

He said instead of stop signs, a dash marked on the pavement for yield would work better. And speed limits should be universal and set depending on road type, highway or urban road. That would cut down on the signage.

Most folks here don’t follow the signs anyway.

Odds and ends

Looking through some old newspaper files and came across a story about St. Joseph city ordinances from the early 1900s. You think our city lawmakers are a hoot now, these are some doozies.

Bathing in the nude is only permissible during the night.

Hoop rolling is banned within the city limits.

Pigs and cows are not allowed on St. Joseph city streets.

Vagrancy is against the law. One definition of vagrancy is “a person who frequents river steamers for the purpose of gambling.”

A fence between you and your next-door neighbor is called a “spite fence” and is considered a nuisance by city law.

The curfew for boys and girls under 15 years of age is 9 p.m. in the summer and 8 p.m. in the winter.

Any person possessing something called a “Mexican puzzle,” apparently a con game, is considered breaking the law.

Alonzo Weston can be reached at alonzow@npgco.com