I’m a city boy who also likes the rural countryside, the more desolate and wild the better. It’s the burbs that have always given me the blues. I can tolerate the inner burbs well enough, the ones surrounding a big city, but I don’t like being in them for long. It’s the deep burbs that give me the heeby-jeebies. All those winding streets, those golf course lawns, trees not much taller than I am, all the houses slapped together in a year and aging faster than the principal on the mortgage falls. The deep burbs always make me feel like I’ve slipped between the pages of Ira Levin’s Stepford Wives. Years ago, when the Talking Heads’ Once In A Lifetime was popular, I had this recurring nightmare where I woke up in a spacious, clean and sterile beyond belief bedroom. Dressed in a pair of stripped pajamas, I walked to the window, brushed aside the lush drapes and look out upon suburbia. I would scream and wake myself up, shaken but thankful it was only a dream.
Anyway, I had to travel out to the deep burbs the other day for a background check. The Dogcar was not happy about the trip, gulping gas and threatening to stall at every red light. But we made it, hot, tired, back aching. In my younger years I loved to drive mile after mile to nowhere. Now? Not so much.
Anyway, deep burbs, background check.
My destination was in a mall, the penultimate heeby-jeeby blues setting. All the little islands at the end of rows in the vast, near empty, lot were awash with flags. Damn near every square inch of soil had a flag sticking out of it. As I walked from the Dogcar to the mall entrance I had this oh-so not PC desire for a flamethrower as turning them all upside down would have taken far too much time.
An interesting thing happened in what was otherwise a pretty boring, if uncomfortable, hour. I kept being asked if I live in Detroit. I’m not sure if this was just standard procedure in a background check or if they couldn’t believe an old white guy actually lived in Detroit. Whatever the case, I must have answered that question a dozen times. By and by the results came back and apparently I’m not wanted by any acronyms, local law enforcement agencies or ex-wives so they wrapped up my pre-owned but never used Beretta PX4 Storm and off I went.
I paused at the exit, pondering the walk across the parking lot past all those flags, flamethrowerless, and the long drive home in the poor old Dogcar. With a deep sigh I resolved that if I ever buy another gun online, I’ll make sure I can pick it up closer to home, far from the deep burbs.
