Editor’s Note: This column was previously published on Feb. 11, 1996.

You should know right off that the person writing this is a habitual offender.

The trouble began the year Ada County adopted its emissions-inspection program. That year, and about every year since, the authorities have sent letters saying that if my car isn’t inspected in the next half-minute, dire things will happen. Prison is never specifically mentioned, but the clear implication is that life as I know it will end.

In other words, no one dreads the annual inspection notice more than I do.

Every year, my car is late getting inspected. The problem is that the place it was inspected the year before invariably has moved or gone out of business. Or, if it’s still there and still solvent, it’s stopped doing inspections for the sole purpose of putting me in the slammer. It happens every time.

This year was different. The place that got me off the hook last year had stopped doing inspections. No surprise there, but an attendant directed me to a cute little inspection van up the street. It looked like it should be selling Fudgsicles instead of monitoring crud.

Another car was in line ahead of me, but the van was a model of efficiency. Except for the stinkerator wire or whatever it’s called falling out of the exhaust pipe, the procedure was smooth and easy. In less than five minutes, a cheerful attendant had wired me for smog, signed my parole and sent me on my way.

Marveling at how painless the whole thing had been, not to mention how cheap the $12 fee is compared with the alternative, I was stunned a few days later to read that the Ada County Commission wants us to vote on whether the inspection program still is necessary.

The commissioners, not noted for harmonious relations among themselves, want to appease constituents who complain it isn’t fair for Ada County to be the only one in the state to require inspections.

Not fair?

It’s hard not to be aghast at the ignorance of such people. Not requiring inspections now that we have clean air is like saying, “Now that the drought is over, let’s run the faucets all the time,” or “Now that gas is cheap, let’s trade in the Honda on a Greyhound bus,” or “now that I’ve had a triple bypass, I can eat cheese dogs and lard sandwiches.”

Ada County is the only county that has inspections because it isn’t like other Idaho counties. Nearly a quarter of the people who live in the state’s 44 counties live in this one. Boise has more traffic every day than places like Spigot and Elkspittle and Dogwater do in years. And we live in a valley that’s made for trapping nasty air, sometimes for weeks on end.

Perhaps the people who are whining about inspections don’t know or don’t remember what life was like around here before we had them.

A friend called it “nuclear winter.” The inversions came and stayed. The air looked like rancid oatmeal, a gray-brown haze that swallowed the mountains and blurred the skyline. You saw the air you breathed. You smelled it, tasted it, loathed it.

Your eyes burned, your throat ached. It was like being in Los Angeles with dirty snow. For respiratory sufferers, it was actually dangerous. Escape attempts soared

It was also depressing. As the weeks of filthy air wore on, a kind of siege mentality developed. You wanted to escape, get out, be anywhere else. Travel agents loved it.

I don’t think anyone wants to risk going back to that, and the county commissioners, of all people, should understand that. But, as we’re again reminded, clear days in the commissioners’ office don’t come often.

If you’ve got a favorite column Tim wrote that you’d like to see in print again, send headline or key words to Niki Forbing-Orr at nforbing-orr@idahostatesman.com.