Fawn Ridge Crossing

Posted on September 5, 2002 in Neighborhood

Orange cones and fresh yellow lines sprung up around the neighborhood. Yesterday, I saw a crowd of candy-pants wearing mothers and their children gathered outside the elementary school. Fingers indexed the class lists which had been tacked to a hurricane fence. Today at around the same time, I slowed for a flood of children crossing Saddleback Ranch Road. A few mothers moved among them, holding the hands of new students as they showed them where to meet the car or the way to walk home. Children massed at the Fawn Ridge crossing. A woman wearing a saffron safety vest and a yellow hard hat watched for the green light and, when passage was permitted, unstopped the backed-up stream of children that had come down the concrete stairs. When they had the chance, some of the kids ran thinking they might beat the incipient rain. Others walked more slowly, either in an act of faith or in ignorance of the vague threat posed by the cottoned-over skies.