Omnibus Saturday. Some of this, a little of that . . .

Helping to save the Martin Luther King Jr. Recreation Center at 38th Avenue and Newport Street from the meddling and outsourcing hands of government is, OK, just one of my more recent obsessions.

A number of people have either written or called since I wrote about the center.

Rec centers in this town, more so than in any other city I've lived in, are the social center and lifeblood of the communities in which they are located. Go into one. It is a truly amazing thing.

As for MLK, the place simply means everything to a lot of elderly, low-income and mostly black folks, many of whom believe they have no voice in convincing the city that proposed cost-saving changes in the way the center is run will virtually destroy it.

My favorite letter comes from a man named Tom Rutter, of Park Hill, who describes better than I could exactly what the center means to the community.

"Wish you'd dropped by MLK yesterday," he writes. "I got there at 5, and couldn't find a parking spot within a block. "Inside were about a hundred little kids playing basketball with their parents, right alongside the old folks and us middle-agers.

"If you'd come by at noon last Friday, you'd have seen this fabulously festive senior's Valentine's Day luncheon happening. Scores of folks partying. Just beautiful."

We are pigs. This rant actually is about plastic grocery bags, but I'll get to that in a second.

Just do what I have been doing ever since state Sen. Jennifer Veiga introduced a bill banning plastic bags in large retail stores within three years.

Admittedly, what I do is a bit stupid and perhaps a tad dangerous, but set that aside for just a second. When you are driving down the road, preferably a freeway, just look out the window. What do you see?

No, no, you have to look in the trees and bushes, and especially at chain-link fences just off most freeways.

Yes, plastic grocery bags.

A half-dozen or more have been flapping like the flags of some weird, post-Armageddon nation all week in the trees along the Boulder Turnpike at Sheridan. I wonder what the president thought Tuesday when he passed the one flapping hard in the tree outside the KFC on Colorado Boulevard in Park Hill.

The point is, they are everywhere. We need to stop before we drown in them.

Jennifer Veiga's bill, which made it out of a Senate committee on a 4-3 vote last week, is well-intentioned and a good start, but she stripped from it the only truly worthwhile provision: A 6-cent surcharge for every plastic bag provided by a retailer at the check-out.

True story:

I was in Wal-Mart last weekend. I needed a watch. What? Hey, times are tough.

So I walk the Armitron up to the register where the kind woman standing there puts it in a plastic bag, wraps it up tightly and places it another plastic bag!

I quietly unraveled all of it and politely handed both bags back to the kind woman. Now, had Jennifer Veiga not backed down, and had I found myself on the hook for an additional 12 cents, I'd have snatched the Armitron out of her hands before it ever saw plastic.

I've started traveling with at least one cloth, reusable supermarket bag in my car. Now if I could just figure a way to drive without looking out the window.

And, finally, "shrimp boat?"

I have been trying for days to get worked up over the supposed racial taunting at the Overland-Mullen high school basketball game last week.

I just can't.

"Buckwheat," one of three taunts hurled by Mullen students at black Overland players, that one I get.

Memo to Mullen High Principal Greg Gotchey: Your kids yelling that wasn't simply "to poke fun at somebody's hairstyle to get them off their game." You and I know exactly what that is: It is a slur, and you should do more than the little you have to publicly apologize on your school's behalf.

"Marshmallow," on the other hand, that probably deserves a pass. It's close, but I'll take the kids' word that they were simply making a word-play on the athlete's last name. Which brings us back to "shrimp boat."

I am at a complete loss. How can I know those are fightin' words? I looked in different places. I Googled it. Everything seemed a stretch.

I finally called William King, professor of Afroamerican studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Bill King suffered Jim Crow, was a part of the struggle in the 1960s. Surely he would know.

He repeats the two words over and over.

"Shrimp boat. It does, if you think about it, maybe it does carry with it an unsavory connotation. After all, shrimp are scavengers."

Has anyone ever called him that? Had he ever heard it?

"No, I haven't," he finally said, puzzled. "I've heard and been called some strong things in my days on this planet, but that is not one of them. I think you are going to have to find someone fairly current in adolescent lingo to get a handle on that one."

Shrimp boat. Goodness.

johnsonw@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2763.

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