One Mile North on Saint John's

Yesterday, I was asked to fill in at another location, so I braved that arterial road of yore up and over the highway to a modern day vestige of the displaced, recluse and inbred. You needn't hear the banjos to know your leaving civilization, the mom and pop ammo shops and moldering road side sheds make it threateningly clear. Funny thing is, it's just five minutes north of the suburban ghetto where I live. People in my twitchy part of town may be meth fiends; they may think of a pit-bull as a weapon; they may blast their Mexican polka and use their second story windows as garbage chutes, but, nevertheless, I feel a kinship to them. We all have our reasons--I mostly just need the cheap rent. But the people one mile north on Saint John's are less Last Exit to Brooklyn and more The Painted Bird. Which is to say, both are brutal, but where I live seems almost festive in its debauchery; up north, don't leave the main roads and cover yer corn hole...or something like that.