LA CROSSE, Wis. — It's time to party on Third Street. Music pulses from bars late into the night. Young women in shorts and halter tops hustle down the sidewalks. Guys in hot rods gun their engines and tear up the street.A block away in Riverside Park, all is quiet. But just beyond the park, the Mississippi River rolls silent and black. Standing guard along the bank are four young men who traded the early spring bar scene for a night of keeping drunks on dry land.
It's another attempt to save lives in this river city, which has struggled for years to break a string of alcohol-related drownings. Since 1997, 10 college-age men, all with eye-popping blood-alcohol percentages, have died in La Crosse rivers. At least 20 other people have nearly drowned over the last decade, many of them after drinking.
Community service at its most basic level.
ReplyDeleteGood on them.