RAH RAH RAH !

I saw something fairly strange this morning. "Fairly strange" In New York City could be cause for alarm anywhere else. I did what I normally do on a Tuesday when time allows. After parking my car, I strolled up to my breakfast coach. The same "roach coach" that I've been a patron of for some years now. Down Columbus Avenue and to the corner of 67th and Broadway where enterprising Greek woman does very well for herself. I order the same thing almost every time: a double order of home fries. She bags on me whenever it's been days that I don't drop bye.

So, it was after I got my order and I began to walk towards my building that I cast eyes on the most curiously contrasting image and scene. It's a stuffy and somewhat humid morning today. There is a feeling in the air that 90 degrees could be achieved. Garbage trucks have already done their rounds along the Upper West Side, so there are no garbage bags at 10:30 a.m. along the sidewalks. There are construction workers with sweat on their t-shirts, nannies strolling along with their charges, and other people dressed in light clothing walking around one sole item that was not picked up by the New York City Department of Sanitation. It's lying on the edge of the sidewalk nearest the curb at 67th and Columbus by the Starbucks.

It's a brown and dry and dead as can be..........Christmas Tree!!!!

It looked worst than the one Charlie Brown chooses from the Christmas tree lot. People are walking around the damn thing and no one stops to flinch about it. I guess that people are processing other things as they amble bye and they do not stop to spot and gauge the incongruity of that item on the sidewalk. It's May 30th. It's after Memorial Day weekend. The tree was bought or stolen over five months ago.

There is only one explanation. One of the apartments above the Starbucks sidewalk where the tree was, must be a narcotics "shooting gallery"; a crack den. Someone may have shaken off some of their stupor this morning, figured it was warm inside and out, and "enterprisingly" carried the tree down to the sidewalk in between fixes. And that junkie was not Australian nor from Buenos Aires!

Wish I had had a camera.

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