IrishTown: Practicality

1. The middle school’s yard is fenced way high and covered in barbed wire. The schoolyard has not one basketball hoop, one tree, one flower. It upsets me, but mostly in context. As I recall, we always played on blacktop in my elementary school, too. Eventually I remember this. Quit with the Tragedy Ann routine.

2. If I had been the Queen of Rivertown, I would have been the Queen of Eminent Domain. (“Off with the shack!”) I would sometimes go through that neighborhood and silently pick houses for demolition. I would have subdivided the lots and given people yards. Of course, if you have a yard, then you have to mow it. It was an aesthetic response, not a practical one. No one can pay taxes or make repairs as it is. Few people have time to garden, although, I think a lot of them would have planted squash vines or flowers.
Abandon the dreams of Benevolent Despotism. No such thing.

3. The mayor was accused of inflating residency rates in the city. Census-takers estimated inhabitants for every building, livable or not. You could see the hollowness of that method where we were.

He was on his last term. It was safe to assign responsibility for the scandal by then.