My Father's Back Yard

Last week, when I went to Greenpoint I was wandering around -- funny, when I was little my grandmother would barely let me go past the front door. It's gentrifying, but a lot of people are still speaking Polish -- a lot of people still don't speak English. There were a few stores that were selling upscale skin care products -- the likes of which would have sent my grandmother into some sort of fit I can only imagine -- but the bakery is still there, and the restaurant where we had her wake...

I think it's so strange, sometimes, how you find what you are looking for in the oddest ways.

As I turned a corner I found this leaking drum.



How weird is that, given this project, that I would find a leaking drum? It wasn't oil -- it smelled more like solvent. it was all rusted out and there was another one a half a block behind though that one seemed empty, if more corroded.

As I said, I don't think it was oil or anything -- but it worried me in thinking about this place. This place that I loved, that my father ran around in with his friends. Even after it all the disregard for health and hazard is apparent in one hour, in one afternoon.