Observations of a Little Town at Midnight
I keep going for walks around midnight, sometimes as late as 2AM. It's very strange to see my home town in the dark... so many little secrets hanging in the still summer air.
I have been playing with different routes and watching to see at what times all the little houses turn off their porch lights. There's a big Finnish house which always has at least four children running around screaming in the dark. So that's when the little boogers let loose! During the day Finnish children tend to be intensely well behaved.
Generally speaking though most houses go dark at about midnight and there are no kids or pets about, just the stars and the moon Oddly enough cars continue to go by, about three or four a night and they are all driving about eighty miles an hour knowing all the cops are in bed. They also never take off their high beams and are continuously blinding me. A few times they have slowed down though, I'm certain one poor young driver was convinced he'd spotted a ghost in me. With my pallid skin I probably shouldn't wear black..
I am most amused by the sneaky cars though, the ones that slither out of driveways they don't belong to, quietly, and in the dark without the aid of the outside lights being on. They are never accompanied at the door and said a proper good bye to so I have to wonder if they are lovers sneaking off into the night after having doubts! Best not to disturb the children...
Don't think midnight trysts are the only secrets this town has to offer. One house I was walking by was surrounded by a wall of a familiar aroma. For a second I was transported back to a living room I hadn't visited in.... I guess just a year (though it feels like a millennia!) I snapped myself out of it. "Christ how much pot is that house smoking in order for the smell to be so strong on the opposite side of the street?!" There was one bedroom light on. I pondered if the people that lived there were the same as the people who lived there during my school days. They had one son who must have repeated each grade two or three times because by the time he reached the seventh grade he looked like he was at the very least the age a high school senior should have been... Suddenly that was starting to make sense.
I also have made trips to various more rural areas. I wandered my way to a few pond shores. The black water is never still as tiny fish and frogs splash haplessly at the surface. Night hawks, owls, and bats swoop overhead. Occasionally you'll hear a large splash and ponder if it was a snapping turtle sucking a dozy duck under water to its doom. Of course I am always wary of stray dogs, bears, foxes, skunks, raccoons, fisher cats, and coyotes. One night I hear a horrible screaming that didn't stop. At first I thought it was a fisher cat which sounds like a woman being murdered (no kidding) but then I heard loud thuds, as if something of great weight was hitting the walls of a barn. I wondered if it was a pig stuck on something. This was the one night I didn't bring a flashlight so I couldn't go explore.. it was still screaming fifteen minutes later when I left. Later I found out foxes scream and it sounded like that! I wonder if it was eating someone's chickens or something. When my mother kept poultry she'd often find the bodies of the birds on the inside of the fence... headless, having lost their heads when out of fright they'd run into the fence and stick out. It was something to ponder.
Everything is so different at night... so peaceful and unassuming. I continue to take walks only then as it lets me see the town in a favorable light rather than an annoying one.
I have been playing with different routes and watching to see at what times all the little houses turn off their porch lights. There's a big Finnish house which always has at least four children running around screaming in the dark. So that's when the little boogers let loose! During the day Finnish children tend to be intensely well behaved.
Generally speaking though most houses go dark at about midnight and there are no kids or pets about, just the stars and the moon Oddly enough cars continue to go by, about three or four a night and they are all driving about eighty miles an hour knowing all the cops are in bed. They also never take off their high beams and are continuously blinding me. A few times they have slowed down though, I'm certain one poor young driver was convinced he'd spotted a ghost in me. With my pallid skin I probably shouldn't wear black..
I am most amused by the sneaky cars though, the ones that slither out of driveways they don't belong to, quietly, and in the dark without the aid of the outside lights being on. They are never accompanied at the door and said a proper good bye to so I have to wonder if they are lovers sneaking off into the night after having doubts! Best not to disturb the children...
Don't think midnight trysts are the only secrets this town has to offer. One house I was walking by was surrounded by a wall of a familiar aroma. For a second I was transported back to a living room I hadn't visited in.... I guess just a year (though it feels like a millennia!) I snapped myself out of it. "Christ how much pot is that house smoking in order for the smell to be so strong on the opposite side of the street?!" There was one bedroom light on. I pondered if the people that lived there were the same as the people who lived there during my school days. They had one son who must have repeated each grade two or three times because by the time he reached the seventh grade he looked like he was at the very least the age a high school senior should have been... Suddenly that was starting to make sense.
I also have made trips to various more rural areas. I wandered my way to a few pond shores. The black water is never still as tiny fish and frogs splash haplessly at the surface. Night hawks, owls, and bats swoop overhead. Occasionally you'll hear a large splash and ponder if it was a snapping turtle sucking a dozy duck under water to its doom. Of course I am always wary of stray dogs, bears, foxes, skunks, raccoons, fisher cats, and coyotes. One night I hear a horrible screaming that didn't stop. At first I thought it was a fisher cat which sounds like a woman being murdered (no kidding) but then I heard loud thuds, as if something of great weight was hitting the walls of a barn. I wondered if it was a pig stuck on something. This was the one night I didn't bring a flashlight so I couldn't go explore.. it was still screaming fifteen minutes later when I left. Later I found out foxes scream and it sounded like that! I wonder if it was eating someone's chickens or something. When my mother kept poultry she'd often find the bodies of the birds on the inside of the fence... headless, having lost their heads when out of fright they'd run into the fence and stick out. It was something to ponder.
Everything is so different at night... so peaceful and unassuming. I continue to take walks only then as it lets me see the town in a favorable light rather than an annoying one.