23 JUN 05: THE RED LIGHTS DISTRICT

What a stunning sight it was, as I drove toward the Columbus Public Library Wednesday evening. Something so eye-catching, so unexpected, so - now stop thinking like that! They did NOT sneak in that new three-story statue....

The surprising sight was a new electronic message board with glowing red lights. It was surprising because of its location -- outside the Dinglewood Pharmacy on Wynnton Road. If this is one of those "local pharmacies" on the brink of financial ruin, how can they afford this?

But beyond that, isn't Dinglewood Pharmacy supposed to be Columbus's top example of an "old school" drugstore? It's been around 87 years, after all -- which is longer than even most serial Viagra customers have been alive....

It simply didn't look right to me for Dinglewood Pharmacy to install a fancy message board like this. It's almost like offering several new flavors of the soda fountain's famous scrambled dogs, and calling them "Cool Cajun" or something.

I asked several co-workers Wednesday night what they thought of the fancy new sign outside Dinglewood, and most of them didn't know about it. But one longtime Columbus resident reacted in rather blunt fashion: "What do they need a fancy sign for? It's only Dinglewood's."

I speculated to the man that Dinglewood Pharmacy may be trying to keep up with the two Walgreens stores down the road. They've had even bigger electronic signs ever since they opened -- but at least they offer specials which change every week.
Dinglewood might change the shake flavors every few years....

The longtime resident had an interesting response to my speculation. "Then Walgreens ought to start selling scrambled dogs." Now there's the true spirit of business and competition - everyone not only looking alike, but selling the exact same things.

"They can sell frozen scrambled dogs," the man continued. Now that would be a challenge. Heat a package in a 350-degree oven, and one of the ingredients is bound to come out wrong - such as a bun or cucumbers burned beyond recognition.

I suppose Dinglewood Pharmacy is trying to look current and modern by adding this electronic sign on Wynnton Road. But for such a historic business to do this in an officially "historic area" seems odd to me - unless, of course, a major drug company paid for it to advertise something better than Vioxx.

BIG PREDICTION UPDATE: So far, so good! Miss Warner Robins won the evening gown preliminary event at the Miss Georgia pageant Wednesday night. But what's going on at the Ledger-Enquirer? The paper's picture made her appear blonde, while the pageant web site shows she's brunette. Is she sponsored by Clairol?

E-MAIL UPDATE: A blogger down the road is pondering the "loose bricks" we mentioned here Wednesday:

Brother Burkard,

I read of the mystery of the disappearing bricks in your blog. I may have a theory. After watching enough episodes of CSI to qualify me as a jack-leg, easy-chair investigator I tend to look at mysteries such as this with a more thoughtful eye. (I can now stay a step ahead of Horatio Caine most of the time).

If you have access to the names on the missing bricks, as it appears you do, you might consider laying those names out on a table and working a word scramble on them. Maybe there is a message in there that if all the names are put together in the right order it reveals a secret. Who knows, it might even be an early, early preparation for putting together a ransom note for when someone steals that 30ft scarecrow that they are going to put in front of the Columbus Library. Could be that it's the same folks that stole Katie the Cow's calf.

Maybe I need to leave off those CSI marathons for a while.....

Bubba...

Be careful, Bubba -- I don't want you to get a heart attack analyzing Emily Procter of "CSI: Miami" too closely.

I really haven't been swept away by "CSI-Mania" - and that probably hurt me in preparing Wednesday's item on the missing South Commons bricks. I don't have that "ultraviolet flashlight" which comes with the CSI jigsaw puzzle, to search for clues.

No, I don't know all the names on the missing bricks. The directory book near the Olympic monument disappeared from its stand years ago. If someone ever organizes a reunion of all the brick purchasers, we could have the name hunt double as a carnival cake walk.

And leave it to Bubba to dare a comparison between the proposed library statue and Kadie the Cow on Manchester Expressway. How many visitors to Fort Benning have driven by that cow over the years, and decided Columbus is the dairy land of the South?

(So why don't we move Kadie and the calf to the front of the Columbus Public Library? There's all that pastureland to enjoy -- much better than the Best Buy parking lot.)

We have time for one more message - this one about the closing of some local supermarkets:

I can't believe you didn't insert some kind of joke about the grocery store chain closing it's PC store and the movie "Because of Winn-Dixie". You must be slipping.

Uh-oh -- that's not going to help me in the "lazy" part of our current Big Blog Question, will it?

But seriously: the recent movie "Because of Winn-Dixie" did cross my mind for Wednesday's blog - but I didn't want to steal a line my friend Lisa Napoli used on public radio's "Marketplace." When Winn-Dixie filed bankruptcy papers in February, she wrote it really was "Because of Wal-Mart."

COMING FRIDAY: Several more e-mails concerning our Big Blog Question.... Including a second one from "A.R." who started all the fuss....

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