Saturday, December 27, 2008
Fog & holiday lights made an interesting visual tonight. Spooky inflated Santas.
Up the street, an apartment building is mysteriously vacant. It's an ordinary building, built in the 60's or 70's, one nearly identical next to it, had ordinary tenants so far as I could tell, never attracted my attention with loud parties or thugs hanging out in front. Completely dark except for the lights that go on when electric goes off. No cars in the parking lot. Something seemed odd about the place in daylight the other day. Tonight I realized it was empty. But when was it vacated & why? I pass it almost every day, never saw any moving vans. There's no notice on the door, no sign of a fire. A fire leaving the tenants of thirty apartments homeless would have been big enough news for local TV.
Even in my building I don't always notice people moving in & out. I didn't see a friendly couple from upstairs for so long I thought they'd gone, & was sad, they were good neighbors. I ran into them by the mailboxes last week & mentioned it. Black woman, white man, around 40 maybe, she likes classic rock, Beatles, Steely Dan, still has a record player, told me the day she saw me moving in my records & spotted a few things she recognized, & I said if I hadn't just sold off 80% of them so I wouldn't have to move them, I would've let her have her pick of that stuff, except the Rolling Stones 3-D album jacket.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
Up the street, an apartment building is mysteriously vacant. It's an ordinary building, built in the 60's or 70's, one nearly identical next to it, had ordinary tenants so far as I could tell, never attracted my attention with loud parties or thugs hanging out in front. Completely dark except for the lights that go on when electric goes off. No cars in the parking lot. Something seemed odd about the place in daylight the other day. Tonight I realized it was empty. But when was it vacated & why? I pass it almost every day, never saw any moving vans. There's no notice on the door, no sign of a fire. A fire leaving the tenants of thirty apartments homeless would have been big enough news for local TV.
Even in my building I don't always notice people moving in & out. I didn't see a friendly couple from upstairs for so long I thought they'd gone, & was sad, they were good neighbors. I ran into them by the mailboxes last week & mentioned it. Black woman, white man, around 40 maybe, she likes classic rock, Beatles, Steely Dan, still has a record player, told me the day she saw me moving in my records & spotted a few things she recognized, & I said if I hadn't just sold off 80% of them so I wouldn't have to move them, I would've let her have her pick of that stuff, except the Rolling Stones 3-D album jacket.
Labels: Elizabeth NJ
