HUMAN WRECKAGE

Low Bars (Not Juke Joints) 

A few years ago I broke down, bought a new lawn mower, a battery charged e-tool. I knew the make and model I wanted because I’d used my neighbour’s the entire summer previous for Edmonton’s twelve mows from Victoria Day through to, maybe, Thanksgiving. It’s an efficient unit, mulching blades, 21-inch deck (Ain’t that a man?) and quiet. I can cut the lawn any time of day or night. My neighbour, Ted the American refugee, really likes my new mower, mainly because I no longer habitually putter around his garage.

We’ve had a little rain recently. Gentle, steady, welcome. The crabapple tree by the Crooked 9’s alley gate blossomed immaculate white. When I mowed the lawn last week, a sunny and breezy day, petals drifted down around me like snow flakes in a Hollywood holiday movie. Just for a moment the miraculous magic of actually existing had clarity, a sharp grace.

Just for a moment, because I had to pause every five feet to decapitate the yellow head of a dandelion. I swear to God the bastards have learned how to duck. I do not like them in our yard. Should one metastasize into a grey R. Buckminster Fuller dome of spores, I torch it with my Zippo. Unmoored spores can ride the wind for kilometres – or a yard over.  I spray dandelions with Killex on hot days when I know they’re thirsty, begging for moisture. I try to dig them out with an inefficient tool designed for the job; parsnip tap roots run deep (Dad used a bayonet. He cleaned eavestroughs with a nine-iron. Those are other stories). My preferred “Dandelion” is the B-side of the Stones’ “We Love You” 1967 single and that’s neither here nor there except that maybe a good song should’ve previously provided me a positive predisposition to the weed.

(Digressive, interrupting tangent ahead: It’s a bit of a stretch to describe the Stones’ psychedelic phase as particularly druggy because, well, gee. “Dandelion” is like a rainbow, an ethereal, mystical girl, “Ruby Tuesday” and a “Child of the Moon”. Their dreaminess may’ve been the fashion at the time, but every Stones ballad is surprisingly tender, something of a minor shock to the listener when paired with a snarling rocker.)

You are familiar with the “broken windows” concept of urban blight. Unreplaced, a single pane of shattered glass multiplies as quickly as social media memes. Thousands of broken windows now. A recent edition of The Economist examined the theory’s complacent corollary. “Public decay” suggests that ten broken windows are, for the most part, all things considered, better than a hundred. Declining civic standards are massaged into normalcy.

Take dandelions. Please. Edmonton’s boulevards and verges are rife with them. Public parks and playing fields are an unkempt yellow. The City’s indifference to its greenery is tacit permission to neighbours (not Ted) to stop maintaining their properties. Nobody seems to care. Weeds are good, make a salad, mix dandelions with kale. God, you know, if you spray dandelions somebody’s dog might get cancer and though dogs don’t vote, their owners do and don’t forget our friendly neighbourhood pollinators because everything’s connected (Note to self: Must hang wasp trap from Ohio buckeye) and, anyway, it’s “No Mow May” which is a bit like disease marketing’s “Movember” when men grow porn star moustaches in honour of their delicate prostate glands.

Everything’s connected, especially when fundamental baseline standards slip a few limbo notches. Canadian cities, most Canadians live in an urban environment, require more funding than property taxes, modest user fees and speeding tickets can provide. Political jurisdictions and responsibilities are web-like, complex, but everything that’s rotten shakes down onto the streets of the naked city. The transit authority’s underground train stations and bus shelters were never intended to be dual-purpose structures, homes for lost souls. Somebody in a higher level of government consciously and callously off-loaded that social problem.

Edmonton City Centre is a misguided downtown mall across the street from city hall. Thirty-five years ago I used to change buses out front. I’d go in frequently to buy transit tickets, cigarettes, do some banking and browse the book and record shops. I hustled through it the other day bent on delivering some documents to my accountant. I saw a lot of hoarding obscuring vacant retail spaces. I counted more security guards than shoplifters, let alone casual clientele. Christ, the anchor tenant used to be a Woodward’s flagship department store. This is the poxy face of public decay and the wreckage wrought, concealed by plain drywall. There’s no covering it up with decorative decals, snazzy graphics. Evidence of decline, of public decay, of a pervasive creeping laxity, is everywhere.

Edmonton is a winter city. Property owners are obligated to ensure adjacent public sidewalks are free of snow and ice. Up until last winter, every neighbourhood boasted a modest network of sandboxes, free grit to help citizens with their civic duty. Locating one now is an irksome treasure hunt. The City will no longer collect discarded live Christmas trees come next January, a traditional courtesy service. This is a small cut in a multicultural society, but I cannot help but wonder about that decision’s impact on service clubs raising funds to ease some other form of public decay. It’s annoying enough trying to get a healthy one home for the holiday.

Summers are short in a northern town, but the season’s days are long. Everybody’s outside, whether active or relaxing. Of course, the City no longer sprays for mosquitos, mainly because their natural predators, bats and dragonflies, don’t invoice. The invisible vise of authorized public decay is everywhere, compressed hours for public facilities like libraries, truncated transit schedules. The squeeze is applied inch by inch. There are 63,360 inches in the mile ahead. Most days I feel like we’re halfway there, sliding on down.       

                                      

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. Sunset Oasis Confidential is with its publisher. Have a look at the jacket design at my companion site www.megeoff.com. Of Course You Did is still available.