Folded Thought of the Day:


Down on Division Street they're building barricades and watchtowers 
and digging trenches on either side.  One side doing their best to 
protect property values and the other's just trying to protect what 
little they've got left.  The Urban League reps stopped coming 
around here years ago.  Too many losing battles under their belt 
and scars from 3rd floor walk-up window projectiles.  

The street-fighting days may be over but there are plenty of 
souvenirs you can pick up, should you be feeling a bit nostalgic.  
The corner stores sell postcards from the great battles and rallies 
and soon-to-be-broken peace agreements (not to mention jaws).  
The Good Samaritans lining up and taking a few blows for the cause.  
The children running through the streets searching faces for 
moms and dads that so recently tucked them in.  The long dark 
night of the soul which took so many. 

And for the serious historian, no trip to Division Street is complete 
without dropping by the site of the Good Humor Massacre.  Now it's 
just a vacant lot with a leaning basketball hoop at the far end and 
the odd lawn chair and shopping cart strewn about.  But it was sure 
a hot spot back in the day.  Block parties and neighborhood dances -- 
not to mention the weddings and religious ceremonies-- all took 
place there.  But the parties all stopped after that fateful evening.  
Some say it started with a mud ball thrown from one side, others say 
it was an unkind word slung from the other.  But it doesn't matter, 
things were getting pretty heated by that time and it was all set 
to go down.  So it did.  

You can get various details of the massacre from the graffiti on the 
broken walls bordering the vacant school house and in the songs 
sung in the railroad tunnels.  No official report was ever submitted 
by the enforcement agents that brought it all to a sudden halt.  
But you can get all the information you need from the frozen eyes 
of anybody who happened to be present for the festivities.  Yeah, 
a few survivors can be found.  But you gotta know where to look.  
They don't get out much these days.   

But on this sunny Sunday early afternoon, all is fairly quiet.  
Major Wilson and his Benevolent Society Jug Band are loading into 
their van and heading down to their weekly gig at the Humane 
Society.  And the rounders are making the rounds, sifting 
through the debris of this split screen society, doing their 
best to pocket an item or two of value to toss onto the nightly 
bonfire.  Word on the street is that this winter will be 
especially cold.  And the sky is threatening to disappear.  
Leaving us with no way to map how far we've veered from course.


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