Red Boxer Shorts

 

How I imagine him

Other than the parking lot of Wolfy's hotdog stand across Peterson Avenue, it is rare to see a Chicago Police car cruising the streets around here. That's because we don't have a very high crime rate compared to other neighborhoods in the city. Unless you count the lady who was murdered, cut up, and stuffed in her freezer by a disgruntled tenant half a block from my house. (I try to be very good to my tenant, Dennis. At least he pays his rent on time.) Anyway, I noticed yesterday that at least four police cars had slowly cruised down our street in the morning. When I talked to my upstairs neighbor about that, he dismissed it as probably nothing. Just cutting through on the way to Dunkin' Donuts. I was skeptical because Dunkin' Donuts is the other direction. So I checked the neighborhood Facebook page. Sure enough, everybody was talking about it. A man in nothing but a pair of red boxer shorts was going around ringing people's doorbells. One lady even mentioned that she had seen him sleeping in her backyard on one of her garden chairs. Apparently the guy was a bit nuts, and when they caught up with him they took him off in an ambulance. So we're safe from guys in red boxer shorts, for the time being. All I want to know is, what's wrong with my house? Why wasn't I included? After all, it's been a long time since a man in boxer shorts has rung my bell.

What he probably looked like

Dumpster Fire

 

About four years ago the building immediately to the north of me was sold and remodeled. It was gutted to the bricks and redone in a clean, characterless manner. Very well done, but with none of the beauty of what had been there for a hundred years. While that remodel was going on there were a series of dumpsters parked on the street in front of that building. I didn't mind. It meant somebody was trying to make the place better. A month ago the building immediately to the south of my building was sold. My wonderful neighbors had to move out and that building was now being gutted down to the brick walls. Once again, there is a dumpster sitting in the street filled with plaster, shattered wood, and other debris. I like it because when I walk the dogs, I can now toss the shit filled plastic bags right up into that dumpster. I don't have to go around to the alley.

Yesterday, my friend and tenant on the second floor put a frozen pizza in the oven. It was a Nick and Vito's pizza, which I highly recommend. The problem was that there was something else in the oven that Dennis forgot about and that something else started burning. Smoke filled the apartment, the smoke alarms went off, and Dennis came downstairs to inform me that there was a fire in his oven. There wasn't any fire, but his apartment was thick with smoke. I opened all the windows, turned on the ceiling fans, and waited for the smoke to dissipate. While waiting, another smoke alarm went off. "Beep, beep, beep, beep...." But it was not in the apartment. I went downstairs to see if it was in my apartment. No, not there. I went into the basement to see if the smoke detectors down there were beeping. No, not there either. Yet it continued, "Beep, beep, beep, beep...." I finally figured out where the hell the beeping was coming from. It was out in the dumpster that was full of all the debris from my neighbor's building. Apparently the guys who were doing the demolition had ripped the smoke detectors out and tossed them into that dumpster. There had been a lot of smoke from Dennis's pizza, but I had no idea.