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Roadside intrigue He Rolled Out the Barrels -- But Why?By Rick Horowitz
Don't get me wrong -- I've got nothing against newspaper stories that go on practically forever. If some enterprising reporter decides to set out every fact and every theory, every bit of background and foreground, each and every relevant digit down to the seventh decimal place -- Fine. But it's the short ones that really grab me. The ones with just enough information to get me hooked on the story, and just enough gaps to get me wondering. They call them "briefs." I call them "treats." Like the story about the man in the hard hat who made them move the barrels. You might have missed it, those five little paragraphs out of Eau Claire, Wis. Here's the first one: "A Lake Tomahawk man who donned a hard hat and orange vest to impersonate a federal inspector at a highway construction site and ordered traffic rerouted four years ago has been sentenced to 30 days in jail." The man in question, the story said, was one Troy Whiteagle, 38. And what Troy Whiteagle was doing in this little story was admitting to something he did in Eau Claire way back in May of '95: He put a stop to construction work along Highway 12. A temporary stop -- only an hour -- but a stop nonetheless. He wasn't supposed to be doing any such thing. On that particular day in May, it seems, Troy Whiteagle was resplendent -- and persuasive -- in his asphalt ensemble: hard hat and bright orange vest. He told the Highway 12 construction crew that he was an inspector with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and he ordered them to move some of those big orange traffic barrels. How many barrels? The story doesn't say. Move them how far? Likewise. And exactly where was all this traffic rerouted? Onto the shoulder? Into another lane? Onto another road? Into a ditch? We're left to speculate -- assuming, of course, we're not already too busy speculating about precisely how this ostensible inspector from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration managed to convince folks who do this sort of thing for a living that their occupational safety and health were in deep doggie droppings unless they moved those barrels somewhere else. On the other hand, they didn't stay convinced for long. "Officials got suspicious," the story says, "when they noticed that his helmet was emblazoned with 'Ho-Chunk Casino' and he asked a female construction worker to have a beer with him." Oops. So don't you want to know what made him do it? I do. I mean, it's not every day someone gets it into his head to play "let's pretend" out where the rubber meets the road. So what was behind it? Did he once have a run-in with a construction worker? With a barrel? Did he have something personal against Highway 12? Or maybe it was some positive thought that put him in costume. He'd always dreamed of directing traffic, say. He'd always dreamed of being an OSHA inspector. Unlikely, I admit -- a quarterback, a fireman, an astronaut I can understand, but an OSHA inspector? Did somebody tell him that being an OSHA inspector was a great way to meet hot babes? We'll never know; the paragraphs run out before the questions do. And there's one more mystery that's keeping me guessing. Troy Whiteagle, the story says, was charged with his various offenses back when they occurred, back in '95. But his guilty plea didn't come until four years later, until late in '99. That's because, the story says, "he disappeared before his case was called in court and was not found until this summer." And aren't you itching to know who else he's been in the meantime? Posted
11/19/99. Aren't you also itching for fresh new commentary twice a week?
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Rick Horowitz