Mortality Forecast Accurate, If Contextually Inappropriate – October 15, 2012
• Monday, August 27 9:49 a.m. A man said that whilst sitting with his dog along Tavern Row, his dog swallowed a piece of rubber. As he tried to extricate the rubber by putting his hand in the dog’s mouth, it bit him. Compounding the crisis was that a bartender yelled at him.
10:17 a.m. A manly man near a Tavern Alley taco truck was reported hitting a black lab puppy repeatedly and for unknown purpose.
10:37 a.m. A cat tied to a telephone pole in the 1000 block of F Street was returned to its owner.
11:49 a.m. In the heat of an argument at a Valley West shopping center, a man told a woman, “Just wait. You are going to die.” The truth of this statement notwithstanding, she asked police to tell him to leave her alone. She didn’t want him banished from the shopping center though, as that’s the only place he has to buy food.
7:23 p.m. Camping equipment was stolen from underneath a 12th Street house.
• Friday, August 31 3:17 p.m. All kinds of sketchy-skeezy, sleazy-weezy, dippy-dopey activity was reported at a Ribeiro Court house. Multitudes of folk come and go from the house late at night, and something that sounds like a vacuum cleaner loudly whirs from within. Then there’s the trench in the front yard, apparently intended too take runoff from some sort of meth lab or grow operation inside. But at least they weren’t killing rabid animals, so far as is known. Police were given photos.
4:17 p.m. A suspected trimming operation in a Union Street apartment stank up the local area, annoyingly entingling neighborly nostrils.
4:45 p.m. At Carl’s Jr., you’ve got friends, not including the backpack-bedecked travelers who swarmed the front and back entrances, harassing customers.
4:53 p.m. Various benches around town were variously torn apart and burned up, abating whatever menace they may have posed.
6:36 p.m. Mystery surrounded the disappearance of a backpack at Sixth and H streets. Had the theft victim left her car window rolled down or not? She didn’t remember. Had she left the pack in the back seat or left it on the ground alongside the car? Hmmm. Anyway, her and her father’s Social Security cards had been inside the stolen pack, now in unknown hands.
• Saturday, September 1 1:54 a.m. With Tavern Row clear at closing time, police concentrated their forces (and video camera) on the swelling crowd in the 900 block of H Street. By 2:30 a.m., the density had dimished and police were able to address other issues.
10:13 a.m. A fire broke out in a back stairwell in the 800 block of G Street, right scross the parking lot from the Fire Department. It was extinguished.
11:10 a.m. A warrant suspect was tracked down in a second floor room, but wasn’t so keen on leaving in handcuffs. He leapt off a second floor balcony, and after a struggle, was taken to the hospital for treatment of a broken ankle. But while being X-rayed, he somehow hobbled away and, resplendent in t-shirt and boxer shorts, was seen headed east in the field south of the hospital. He was again spotted north of Rebeiro Lane, and eventually located on Spear Avenue. The entire imbroglio took over six hours.
2:36 p.m. A bike left unlocked at an I Street ice cream shop disappered faster than an artisinally crafted peach cobbler cone.
3:45 p.m. As a woman and her friend sat on her I Street porch, another woman with dirty blonde hair and a red jacket came up to them and asked to use the friend’s cell phone. It was handed to her, and the woman and friend went inside the house for a moment. When they went back out, the woman and phone were gone.
4:25 p.m. A man was reported forcing an injured Great Dane to walk in Tavern Alley. He told an officer the dog was ill with multiple disorders and on medication. He was walking it to give it some fresh air.
5:09 p.m. A car parked near an historic Plaza storehouse may have earned the crappy parking award, despite abundant competition. Not only was it straddling two spaces, one of them a handicapped spot, but the bumper was hanging over and blocking the sidewalk.
• Tuesday, September 4 7:57 a.m. A “nest” of feral cats was found at a Samoa Boulevard construction site.
9:46 a.m. A sidewalk dope smoker’s second-hand emissions filled an H Street property management office.
12:47 p.m. A man took a $90 check from someone he only knew by first name, and it was worthless.
6:32 p.m. A man in patchwork shorts and dreadlocks filled a grocery basket and walked out with it at a Uniontown supermarket.
11:37 p.m. A man at 16th and I streets yelled and whistled for someone to let him in a house, paused for a bit, then returned for more whistling and yelling.
• Sunday, September 2 7:52 a.m. After having “three strong drinks” and waking up in a flower bed, a man reported that he may have been run over by a car. When police talked to him, he still reeked of booze but only had a small scratch on his right knee, hardly consistent with being run over.
10:34 a.m.
A bongo, the root of all evil
Empattered a Plaza upheaval
Police found a clumping
Of slouchabouts, slumping
And silenced the wanderer-weevils
6:21 p.m. After a long-haired man walked past a car on M Street three times, a woman’s purse disappeared from within, as well as its cash, credit cards and keys all valued at $750.
• Monday, September 3 9:34 a.m. A creepy door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman went to an Olympia Street home and started asking the resident about his sister.
• Wednesday, September 5 6:31 a.m. A man at a Union Street apartment complex was heard to yell, “I want to murder someone. Get me my gun,” as though barking out commands to some sort of personal firearms attendant. But since the walls are “paper thin,” it couldn’t be determined which apartment the command emanated from.