IrishTown: Climate

IrishTown was laid out with single family dwellings one right after the next, not a lot of yard, just the alleys inbetween. Not a lot of trees, if any. The houses are wooden, mostly shotguns, most of them over a hundred years old. The streets are narrow, as befits a neighborhood built before the advent of Automobiles. Those houses that do have yards have enclosed yards. Everyone has bars on the windows. The kids play football on the street.

Houses were abandoned on my street and all the streets. They’re boarded up. Big deal. The plywood has baked and soaked up river humidity. People have pried away screws and broken windows so they can go inside.

There’s a lot of mosquitoes because it’s tropical. There’s a lot of mosquitoes because rimless tires sit around the neighborhood and collect water. These tires are great places to leave single-servings of rock that have been paid for elsewhere. The water washes the fingerprints off the plastic—or—that’s the legend. The water breeds mosquito larvae. That’s a fact.

I start collecting tires for trash pickup. I never find any rock, though—not that I want to. The trash collectors will take anything, anything at all—so long as you tip. Sometimes I wonder how much it costs if you have a dead body. I find out about that much, much later—not from them.

It takes me a week to figure the women headed to the bus in the morning do not work in health professions. They are cleaning houses. I used to clean houses too, but not in scrubs. I tell myself this is why I don’t get it right away.

Wikipedia entry Crack Cocaine, in case you are interested