I accompanied Beth
again as she went to take pictures of houses for a real estate
appraisal. We went to Saugus, which is not far away. I hardly know
the place. I am moved to write of Saugus.
It is an old town.
In Cub Scouts, we went to the Saugus Iron Works on the goddamn
hottest day of the year. Didn't get a great impression of the place.
We passed thru
Wakefield on the way. Wakefield centre boasts a sparkly New England
green and an amazing amount of landscaped flowers and shrubs. Just
outside the centre is a lake full of sailboats and surrounded by
people briskly afoot. Nice!
Saugus, on the other
hand, is the Corner Liquor Store Capitol of the World. Saugus also
ties for second in the Neighbourhood Pizza Joint competition. I saw
quite a few grandly invasive churches, including some that probably
have bomb shelters for riding out the Apocalypse. That's just a
guess. I'm talking the Bible as read thru crazy, which is a pretty
normal state of affairs, sadly.
On the plus side of
Saugus, they don't chop down trees unnecessarily. On one side of the
road you see houses cramped together. On tother, a hillside of
vegetation, permanently empowered.
Speaking of which,
Saugus has more than its share of hillside. I swan to John, West
Virginia would be envious of the ups and downs of Saugus.
Furthermore, roads in Saugus shimmy side to side by a good sum.
Really, you don't see more the 20' ahead on the road, and these roads
are often thin.
We went off a main
road onto your best guess of a back road, which wriggled here and
there then gave way to a coven of normalesque suburban homes. I added
the -esque because several of these houses had pedestaled lions at
the driveway's mouth. Whoa, grandeur! One grand house had a wrought
iron fence surrounding the property. Chez Citadel for the Coming
Economic Downfall.
Beth and I both
shifted between thinking Not Bad
and Armpit. It is a
weird half rapture. I mean, the aforementioned Saugus Iron Works, a
17th
century work of plucky colonists and a national historic site, sits
amidst an ordinary clutch of suburban normal. I thought you would
like to know about Saugus. It resides in all of us.
