GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #471: ANOTHER ONE GONE

I live near the viaduct between Elmhurst and Berkley. I've mentioned that before, but I've noticed a lot of activity in the area of late. Construction workers doing their thing. Judging from the similar activity at the viaduct on Butterfield Road, I figure they're adding lanes to the interstate. One day while driving home I saw they cleared out the wild area where the residences stop. You know, the area where we all flung our dogshit when I was a kid.

It's a shame that's going away. I always kind of liked that giant valley between the interstate and the homes. It also sucks for the wildlife. I can't tell you how many times I've seen deer and coyotes shuffling along back there. It's how they travel from town to town without actually getting onto the interstate. Other animals are back there, too, and I can only assume their homes are going to be taken away.

It should be mentioned that Icky Sticky Poo Land was a part of this unofficial wildlife trail. It seems that progress and civilization exists solely to eat up the land I loved as a kid. "You can never go home." I guess that's true. It's a bit hard for me to see it since I've lived in Elmhurst my entire life. It's like looking in the mirror. You can barely tell you're getting older. You know it intellectually, but you have very little evidence of it until your hair starts going gray. But run into someone who hasn't seen you in 20 years? They know exactly how much you've really aged.

People who left Elmhurst and came back twenty years later? They wouldn't even recognize it. It's kind of weird to think about, but I'm not going to go too heavily into it because I think I'm going to talk more about it when I hit GF #475. It's been a while since I mentioned Gramps, and he'll figure into it then.

Shit. I guess they're going to have to knock down those giant walls on the interstate to add lanes. It'll be like the old days. For a while, anyway.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #107: MOUNTAINS OF DOGSHIT

[Or perhaps I should say GOOD MORNING, FUCKERS. I was going to post this last night, but I had a technical issue with my computer, which I will probably talk/complain about for tonight's GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS. I didn't change anything from the post, so it's still composed of thoughts from the top of my head before going to bed. I only added this preface to let you know that I DO have a reason for not posting last night, and it wasn't because I was drunk in a ditch or anything like that. Without further ado . . .]


I was, for the most part, raised by my mother's parents. My mother's side of the family were always dog people, except I showed up at the end of that era. I remember as a child having a cocker spaniel named Brandy around my grandparents' home. I loved that dog, but I was pretty young when she got sick and had to be put to sleep. I don't think I was even five at the time. By that point, I think my grandparents' hearts had been broken by a long line of sick dogs needing to be put to sleep, so they vowed to never get another pet again.


When I was a kid and was told that Brandy had been put down, I cried. I hated my grandparents because I was a kid and didn't understand the world yet.


I'm not a pet person, and I don't think I ever will be. I like cats and dogs and fish, but I don't want to be responsible for another creature's life. If I could have the kind of relationship John Wayne had with the dog in HONDO, that would be fine. I don't like the idea of buying my friends. It makes me feel cheap and needy. I don't have anything against people who do have pets, it's just not my thing. I think the idea was cemented into my head by the death of Brandy, and that's fine. I can barely take care of myself, anyway.


But I remember from my youth that Gramps would always take Brandy out into the backyard for her shits. Back then, we had a huge backyard that bordered along the interstate. I remember I would sit back there with my cousin and watch the trucks blaze by. Then, they put up a wall, which I hated back then because it took away my truck-watching fun. Now? I understand that they built it because the people who lived on that block actually wanted to sleep at night.


But my grandfather would take the dog out into the backyard, and Brandy would shit. Gramps would then bring the dog in, and he'd take a shovel--which still hangs in his garage to this day--and he'd scoop up the shit and fling it over the fence at the rear of the backyard.


Whenever my cousin and I played ball back there, and the ball went over the fence, I never wanted to get it because I imagined mountains and mountains of dogshit from Brandy just waiting to be stepped in. Obviously, only a kid would think that. But still, even now I think about those towering piles of shit, and I wonder if maybe we could have grown for-real crops, like farmers.


Drifters would sometimes walk back there. Hitchhikers and people who were looking for help. (Before the wall went up, that is.)  I wonder how many of them cursed out Brandy and the other dogs in the neighborhood. Gramps wasn't alone. All of our neighbors threw our dogshit back there.


That's probably illegal now, like leaf-burning, which I also enjoyed to do as a kid. I don't exactly miss the old days, but it's still kind of weird thinking about the things that were normal back then. Maybe I'll write more about that in a future GF. Until then, goodnight fuckers.