Alquitrán Niño

When I lived in Chicago, after a long and brutal winter, that first nice sunny day with the temperature over sixty degrees was like a holiday. Hoards of people would be out walking around the city in shorts and flip flops, acting like it was Florida even though there were still those occasional dirty piles of snow melting into the grass. And even if every square foot of grass along the sidewalk was filled with freshly uncovered, defrosting dog poop, everyone was in a good mood. On days like those I couldn't wait to throw open the windows and let the fresh air blow through the house and push the stale, dry, winter air out. Unfortunately I almost never got to keep those windows open. Invariably somewhere in the neighborhood, somebody was getting their building re-roofed and the noxious fumes would fill my apartment requiring me to close the damn windows again. I don't know why, but it always, always, happened that way.

This has been the coldest winter in my memory here in South Florida, so when the temperature finally climbed towards seventy degrees I ran around opening windows. 'Ahhh, fresh air', I thought. Within minutes the house filled up with the choking, sulfuric fumes of hot roofing tar. I went outside to see where the smell was coming from, and up on the roof of the building directly behind me were a dozen Mexican men busily spreading tar. Three days later, they were still up there working just as hard as the previous two days. In my swimming pool was a thick oil slick floating on top of the water, the two outdoor cats were hacking up tarry fur balls, and inside the house Mark was having terrible coughing fits. Yes, I thought, it’s springtime. There are two bad smells that actually trigger good feelings in me. First there is the smell of diesel exhaust, that mentally brings me back to the streets of Chicago, and all the fun I had there. Then there is the horrible, gagging smell of hot tar, that always reminds me of beautiful sunny spring days.