Chicago just got another ten or twelve inches of snow. In some of the Chicago neighborhoods, where parking is often at a premium, it is an age old tradition in Chicago (and probably hundreds of other cities) to shovel out a parking spot and stake a claim to that spot with furniture and other odds and ends. People have literally died contesting these claims. The Chicago Tribune published the following "poem" two weeks ago.
Breathes there the Chicagoan with soul so dead
who never to himself has said,
"This is mine own, mine shoveled spot"?
And when he returned from travels afar
in his behemoth sport-ute car, has not asked,
"Where's mine? Why, it's still there between
the pylon and the old lawn chair."
For him no minstrel raptures swell.
Despite his power and his pelf (look it up),
the wretch, concentrated all in self,
shall forfeit fair renown and shall go down
to the vile dust from whence he sprung.
Unwept, unhonour'd and unsung.
-- Charles Leroux with Sir Walter Scott |
