on the street

I may as well have been Lieutenant Sunderstrom ashore in San Diego in On the Beach.


But it was main street in San Patricio.  At 2 in the afternoon.  On a Monday.


Where was the traffic trying to wend its way through double-parked pickups?  Where were the local residents finishing up their daily shopping?  Or the gaggles of Canadians looking for a rumored bottle of HP sauce?


I almost expected zombies to stagger out of the open, but uncustomered shops.  But that would be too easy to confuse with one of the tourist bars.


As colorful as the possibilities were, reality, as is the usual case, was far more prosaic.  No life-ending radiation.  No zombies.  No enchanting witches (well, maybe in the aforesaid tourist bars).


The non-poetic truth: it was clean up day for the San Patricio streets.

The firemen were there with their powerful hoses to assist local volunteers in clearing the hardened flood mud off of the streets.  And even though the sun was stomach-churning hot (hot enough to make me dream of a ski vacation), the volunteers were doing yeoman work in washing the mud off the streets.


And a good idea it is.  Every time I drive through any of the triplet villages, whether in town or on the highway, it looks as if Charles Schulz could find a life model for Pig-Pen.  Just like Pig-Pen, we are surrounded by the dust of ancient civilizations.


But today, the volunteers were attempting to emphasize the noun and soften the adjective.


I think they did a rather good job.