Sitting outside on a chair that will probably be sold Saturday during the estate sale. Maybe it goes with the house. We’ll see. The stagers are on day four of the repositioning of household goods and personal possessions. It's like being a ghost at your own wake.

In the morning I took three fire extinguishers to the hazardous waste disposal facility. I’ve been there many times over the years; feels familiar. Then I drove to FedEx to return the keyboard tray and have some documents shredded. A grocery store had a “Shredding Day” set for Thursday as well, but when I investigated I learned you had to make a $15 charitable contribution for each bag, so no. Cheaper at FedEx. Then I . . .

. . . just drove around for a while.

The third errand was leaving some glass and wood at the county’s household detritus facility, 20 minutes away, but it wouldn't open for anhour. I’d only been going there since the Troubles began. I’ve made four, maybe five trips. Stone, glass, wood, bricks, stuff. They’re the cheeriest group of public servants I’ve ever met - they go the extra mile to smile and help and you can josh with them and they like it. Whaddya got, my man? Car parts and LP tanks. (He's standing by a sign that says NO CAR PARTS LP TANKS.) The place is a dank hellscape that feels like a medieval jail, and they’re still upbeat.

But it doesn’t open until 12:30. You should get in line about 12:10 at the latest. I had 40 minutes, so I drove around downtown, noticing how nothing had changed, wondering who lives in those towers, why they live there. I guess I thought the same thing about the Fred, once. Drove to the West Bank, around Cedar Square West as I will always call it, now known as Little Mogadishu. The place has changed a lot. To put it mildly. The old 400 bar, a storied dive where we drank cheap beer, gone. Annie’s Parlour, home of the best burger / fry / shake combo in town, where the collegians and West Bank granola crowd went, gone. Not a sign of them. The Valli West still looks the same, although it’s not been the Valli for 40 years. Viking Bar, gone.

I drove down Franklin, which has always been a rough street. Back in my time, you didn’t go there after dark. The Taco Bell closed. (It was, for a while, the notorious Taco Bell.) Lots of bright buildings now, either outreach centers or other public buildings, or brightly painted restaurants - although those proliferate as you move from the American Indian section to the Hispanic section. Then I jogged down Cedar, past the Heart of the Earth project, past street corners occupied by figures huddled under the rain next to grocery-store carts piled high. Eventually I made my way to the gate: 12:10. I sat and read for a while. Texted. Kept wife informed of my status, since she was dropping off her car to get new tires for the journey to the new life. I wanted to pick her up so she didn’t have to walk home in the rain.

The place where I dropped off the glass and wood was empty. Never seen it empty. A city employee was pushing a big broom around to gather the sand. I told him it was beautiful and one could eat off the ground here. I asked if I should lay the glass against the wall, and he said I could just throw it. It’ll get broken anyway.

Then I drove back and picked up my wife at the tire shop and we drove home. There was an empty lot on the way, with a chain-link fence.

Something had been demolished. Neither of us could remember what it had been.

Google helped:

The amount of vegetation has waxed and waned, you could say.

I think it was a substation, whatever that is. Possibly phone company switching equipment, although there’s one of those up the street from the same era.

It’s gone now.

My AI credits renew on April 21 and they don’t roll over, so I burn them off animating photographs.

BRONK’S! It was a “package store” in Fargo. It had a statue of a cowboy riding a bucking bronco on the roof. That was back in the days when statuary on the roof of a liquor store was notable, but not surprising.

It’s not there anymore. The statue, according to someone on Facebook, ended up at a stable in Horace, but I can’t find it.

Horace being just down the road from . . .

Here’s another main street postcard, brought to “life” with a fast-falling dusk. Notable for the first car really hauling axle backwards down main.

This one, though . . . this one I really like.

Fargo, 1950.

I would gladly walk into that picture and never come back, if I could.

I was to be executed for some crime no one could quite describe convincingly. All that was certain was that I was guilty. The method of execution: shot through the heart with an enormous arrow.

A tad on the nose, that one.

I don't quite know why, but I had an aversion to this band, and I think it was entirely due to their name. It annoyed me.

The sound it all makes me deeply nostalgic. Do you know what I mean?

That will do. Now the sale. Then the last week. Oh - just noted on checking the upload that I did not, in fact, update Curious Lucre. This may be due to the Dog Kennel Rust Issue, which I will address on Monday. I'm sorry. I forgot a podcast obligation today because I didn't know what day it was. Je suis le wreck.

Substack's probably free today. Don't know. Considering it. Tell your friends. Encourage them to sign up! Many interesting things to come once the Crack-Up is complete and the bones start to knit.