Dawn Comes Early, So Does Trouble

Sparks has a way of reminding us that civilization is a thin coat of paint, and sometimes it chips before breakfast.

Just before 6 a.m. on Sunday, an hour when honest men are usually arguing with their alarm clocks, a man was sitting in his car near Salomon Circle, not far from Loop Road and Vista Boulevard. He was doing, one assumes, the usual early-morning thinking: whether coffee is worth the effort, whether sleep is a memory or a promise.

Then a dark sedan arrived, apparently with fewer philosophical doubts.

Police say the vehicle pulled up and opened fire on the man. The sort of behavior that makes one wonder what exactly is taught, learned, or ignored in the wider public square.

The victim, struck, but by fortune or poor aim or both, suffered non-life-threatening injuries. Later, he got released from Renown Hospital, which is itself a modern miracle: surviving both gunfire and paperwork.

Sparks Police are now looking for the shooter, as police departments in America so often find themselves doing less like sheriffs of a settled land and more like referees in a game where half the players never agreed to rules in the first place.

They are asking witnesses to come forward, as is customary, and providing numbers for those willing to speak into the machinery of civic order: Sparks Police Detectives at 353-2225, or Secret Witness at 322-4900. One hopes someone answers, though experience suggests the good citizen is often outnumbered by the quietly indifferent.

There is a temptation in such stories to reach for grand explanations. But sometimes the truth is smaller and more irritating: that decency is fragile, consequences become unevenly distributed, and too many people now treat public streets like private grievances with tires.

And so the rest of us are left with the old-fashioned expectation that order is not automatic, that it requires both law enforcement and citizens willing to be more than spectators, and the modern disappointment that this expectation is an option in too many places.

Sparks will continue on its merry way, of course. The question is whether it will resemble a town or merely a location where things keep happening before sunrise.