The Thin Line Between Love and Tomatoes

[krasnoludek]

Does anyone else find the first sentence of the third paragraph painfully difficult to parse? I finally got it, but only after several minutes of staring in confusion. First two paragraphs included for context. (source)

Comments

[once_a_banana]

Huh? I don't see the problem....

[krasnoludek]

Christian didn't have a problem either. My primary issue was with the phrase: the city's historic fire chief's house. Here's the course of my confusion

[krasnoludek]

incidentally, Christian did agree with me that the phrase lends to some ambiguity. He suggested "city's historic fire chief house" to make the compound clearer. If you do "fire chief's house", then my first reading semantically is the incorrect "the house that the fire chief owns", as opposed to the correct "the house provided for the fire chief". This misreading undoubtedly comes from the uncommonness of the compound, because the more common "governor's mansion" is clearly "the mansion provided for the governor." There may also be a slightly complicating factor that "fire chief" is already compound.

[once_a_banana]

Meh. I think the writer did a perfectly fine job. Perhaps you are just a terrible reader! :-P

Honestly, I just don't see most of these issues at all. But it's possible that's because I was already completely familiar with the facts of the story before I read this passage.

[jtwonderdog]

You totally missed the real screamer: "through the house." WTF? The tomatoes came out the other side?

[once_a_banana]

Yeah, actually, this was the one thing that caused me to slightly raise an eyebrow. It's an interesting use of the word "through"... as in... "all through the house". Dude really went to town with them tomatoes.