The gods are bowling. We can hear them up there like so many really big Lebowskis trying to convert a 7-10 split. And somebody up there must’ve spilled his beverage, because we’re getting our first precip’ in the better part of quite some time. Hallelujah. A trail ride these days leaves my bike coated with a fine brown dust and sets me to wheezing.
The boisterous young swine who apparently have been evicted from the crumbling rental across the alley will not welcome a bracing rain, however. A crew of laborers spent the past few days piling their goods in the tiny back yard, and a mighty big pile it was, too.
The owner has a tragic history and according to Rumor Control was no better at picking husbands than she is at picking tenants. We’ve seen quite a parade of folks come and go at her rental property, most of them night-crawling yowlers who remind me very much of me at a certain age, only with more tattoos. Dogs were much in evidence, and once a child, but mostly it was a progression of shaggy young men with no visible means of support.
The cops paid a visit to the place recently, flanked by a fire truck and ambulance, and shortly thereafter the inhabitants vanished, leaving strangers to stack their worldly goods outdoors. A metal bed frame disappeared overnight, as did a bicycle. A battered Hotpoint range, boxes of cassette tapes and magazines, a stained mattress and a scattering of clothes remained when we sneaked a peek this morning.
They weren’t there for long, though. Word spread and a flock of scavengers in pickup trucks spent most of the morning picking through the refuse for objets d’art. Looks like the recession still has its hooks in some folks, no matter what The Wall Street Journal says.
Last but not least came the trash truck for the items nobody else wanted, even for free. There’s something kind of sad about that.
Still, there’s also something to be said for walking away from a fuck-up instead of packing it along with you like luggage. Here’s another bit of Thomas McGuane, from “Something To Be Desired.” Lucien Taylor and his estranged father are indulging in a bit of unauthorized camping, and as many things do in a McGuane novel, it ends badly.
His father circled the tent slowly, digging a finger into his disordered hair, inventorying the camp, the camp that a few days ago had been erected as a gateway to an improved world.
“We’re looking at under a hundred bucks,” said his father, standing at their camp. “Let’s walk away from it.”
Mad Blog Media 
When I was a young teenager, I met an adult who said you should never have more stuff than you can pack into a car in 25 minutes. I don’t know why that has stuck with me all these years, but I think of it when I look at all the crap I’ve amassed.
I think the dude that taught me that nugget of wisdom was on the same journey as your former backyard neighbors.
Jeff, I lived by that maxim once. I used to be able to stuff everything I owned into a Datsun (later Toyota) pickup. When I fled Tucson in 1980, I abandoned a bicycle because there was no room for it in the truck. Little did I know that a decade further along the rocky road of journalism I would be carving my name into velo-history as The Painful Rectal Itch of American Cycling®.