Darn it. I’ve got to go to the bank tomorrow to deposit all those checks the city of Santa Clarita, Metrolink and All-vision sent me to write what I’ve written about billboards. I’m sure all of us who support the billboard ordinance are headed to the bank to do that. Especially the City Council and city staff members who are making so much money from the deal.

Now let me add up the total of the checks to date. Oh, wow. This is just wonderful. All of us got a grand total of ZERO dollars.

Must I repeat for those 22 readers of mine that I write for free? I love doing it. SCVNews, the city of Santa Clarita, All-vision, the people in Val Verde and various political parties pay me nothing. Zero. Zilch. So, complaining to the City Council about me doesn’t help your cause or hurt mine.

If you want to complain about what I write, tell me in the comments. I do find it hypocritical that a person who has repeatedly said he supports the entire United States Constitution would go and complain to the GOVERNMENT about what I write. Maybe he hopes they will stop me from writing. He does support free speech as long as it is the speech he wants to hear.

Once or twice before I’ve had some complaints about what I’ve written. One time a member of the West Ranch Town Council said I made a threat. He called the publisher of the newspaper and the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, then stole a picture from the SCVHistory.com website to prove I was prone to violence. You can read that story if you dig through all that are posted on DManzer.com.

Last winter, some folks in a small Midwestern town got angry because I wrote a review of the restaurants and nightlife in that town. It wasn’t complimentary. They threatened to run my RV, my little basset hound and me into the local river. Funny, my 22 readers in the Santa Clarita Valley said nothing about that – but all 3,500 residents of that small town had plenty to say. Yes, it was a few more than 22.

Just so the 22 readers of mine know where I stand on certain subjects, let me be perfectly clear:

1. In my opinion, the petition against the billboard ordinance was ill-advised and just plain dumb. The people who support and defend that action have every right to do so. They can say and do what they want. I would agree with them – but then there would be 23 of us wrong.

2. Chiquita Canyon Landfill has done a lot for the SCV and Val Verde. They have given many thousands of dollars to lots of charities and to support scholarships, too. That doesn’t make them a good neighbor when they don’t follow the regulations for dump operations as required by the county, state and federal governments. They would be the best neighbors if they spent the money on proper equipment to operate and monitor the dump rather than buy political votes.

3. The California High Speed Rail Authority is a scam. It wants to run non-stop through our valley and cares not what happens to us all the way from Acton to the end of Sand Canyon Road. Not only that – it is a state project that costs too much and will not be used by those who would like to use it because it will be too expensive. Did I mention that ridership on Metrolink is dropping? If we can’t get people to ride Metrolink, what are we going to have to spend to get them to ride the “bullet”? It is a state project that needs a “bullet” to finish it off.

4. Facebook is a rotten way to run a city. We should seek real information from real people.

5. Mentryville is going to be destroyed unless there are immediate actions to preserve the remaining buildings. How a conservation and environmentally concerned entity can use vast amounts of weed killer to remove brush around buildings is strange, to say the least.

This is good. I’ve got so much to write about now. All I do is read what my 22 readers have to comment about, and I’m assured they’ll have a lot more to read – and comment about. So we’re all kept in some sort of employment – or if not exactly “employment” since no money changes hands, at least we’re kept off the streets.

It wasn’t always this much fun. But as long as I have my 22 readers, my life is nearly perfect. By the way, my head isn’t in the sand or in anybody’s back pocket. When somebody starts paying, I guess I’ll have to do what they say and write what they want.

Until that day comes, I’ll just keep trudging this road one step at a time and one day at a time. Just to mix things up for the 22, I think I’ll come up with 22 subjects, one for each of them. I can repeat those every 22 days.

I doubt they’ll notice.

Darryl Manzer grew up in the Pico Canyon oil town of Mentryville in the 1960s and attended Hart High School. After a career in the U.S. Navy he returned to live in the Santa Clarita Valley. He can be reached at dmanzer@scvhistory.com and his commentaries are archived at DManzer.com. Watch his walking tour of Mentryville [here].