Did you see the new moon in the old moon’s arms tonight? What a beautiful evening!
It’s a party night here in lovely uptown Phoenix. As the dogs dragged their human around their mile-long racetrack, music and near-music serenaded us from all directions, near and far. The neighbors with the vizlas are having an outdoor party in their front yard, the chatter of cocktail talk rising into the night. Over in Richistan, one of the Privileged is blasting his neighbors with loud rackety noise that I guess is supposed to be music — no cars parked outside, though, so presumably no real party is going on. Visiting teenaged relatives, maybe?
The night is so balmy, it’s hard to believe we’re coming up on the end of November. Not even a sweater is needed.
Also over in Richistan, the City’s “we’re a-gunna condemn this shack” sign has disappeared from the front window in the wreck of a house recently vacated by the strange brothers. More amusing gossip has been heard on that front. Videlicet:
The other evening I stopped to chat with the eccentric couple who live catty-corner across the road from that place. He said they believed the explosions described by the other old-time neighbor I spoke with a couple weeks ago were not incidents related to the men’s shade-tree garage business. Rather, they believed, the brothers were cooking up meth in the back of the house.
And it is true that when they moved out, every window in the house was left hanging open — the place is still wide open.
Shee-ut. If it was a meth house, the City may make them bulldoze it. That, one suspects, would be the path of least resistance. Still…what a waste! These are historic-era homes: almost 70 years old. In Phoenix, you can get historic designation if a house is 50 years old.
Meth was the product of choice for dealers and wannabe dealers in these parts, for quite some time. Sh*theads turned houses into meth factories even in some very fancy neighborhoods — like Palmcroft, probably the most elegant gentrified district in the Valley. Friend of mine moved into a district called Moon Valley, a wannabe fancy area that has had its ups and downs.
Cattycorner across the road from the house she bought stood a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house that had been a meth house and had been condemned. A lot of argument ensued over whether the place would be demolished, the theory being that the chemicals used permeate the structure’s building materials so that it will never be safe to live in again.
So it remains to be seen what will become of Tony the Cat and his sidekick. The old guy across the street said both cats were back and OK. No one in the hood is able to adopt them, which probably doesn’t matter because they’ve always been “outside cats”: read “feral.” People leave food outdoors for them.
However, two mated coyotes have taken up residence in the brush outside a house one street to the north (another eccentric: an architect who thinks feral shrubbery is arty…and it surely DOES block the view from the street into his house). They stroll up and down Tony’s street all the time — I carry a coyote shilelagh with me whenever I take the short stuff out.
So it goes, on the eve of Thanksgiving, 2017…
