2019 - Day 28/337 - Monday...Petard...

I am particularly fond of this particular derelict piece of forgotten architecture. If you look very closely, or maybe if you can enlarge the photograph, you can see the old light over the door of the building. My great-grandfather (Charlie Beasley) and my great-grandmother (Loubaner Roden Beasley) ran a little store in Winfield, Alabama. It was on Highway 79, which ran (at least) from Memphis to Birmingham. Winfield is about 50 or so miles north of Birmingham. The store was about a quarter of a mile from their house in Highway 79. In the summers, we would head south (from outside Detroit where I grew up) to Chicago, Memphis, through Mississippi and then to Winfield. My dad grew up in Alabama and Memphis, my mother grew up in Memphis, and much of the family fled north in the 40's and 50s in search of work. BUT, Charlie and Loubaner were camped out in Winfield. I would go to the store (Charlie's Store as it said on the front) and the best part was that I always got aa grape soda. This old building on the service road of IH-35 reminds me of Charlie's Store, and I expect that is exactly what it was before the highway system, or just the passing of time, put them out of business.

Tales of the City: This afternoon, a woman came in to our office, reeking of cigarette smoke. I thought she was a tenant, she looked unhappy, like tenants look when it is time to pay the rent. She asked for a tampon. When no tampons could be produced, she asked for a box on tampons. When that request could not be fulfilled, she asked for money so she could buy some tampons. NO? Well, she then just asked for money, period. No money forthcoming, she pointed to something of our front desk and said "This is new, this used to be my desk." And then she left.

The city if full of freaks, they have just made themselves known earlier this year than usual.

Petard -- Noun: 1. a case containing an explosive to break down a door or gate or breach a wall. 2. a firework that explodes with a loud report. "Leslie is said to have distracted the castle governor while his men blew up the main gate with a 'petard.'" David McLean, Edinburgh Evening News, April 4, 2017

Did You Know? Aside from historical references to siege warfare and occasional contemporary references to fireworks, petard is almost always encountered in variations of the phrase "hoist with one's own petard," meaning "victimized or hurt by one's own scheme." The phrase comes from Shakespeare's Hamlet: "For 'tis the sport to have the engineer / Hoist with his own petar." Hoist in this case is the past participle of the verb hoise, meaning "to lift or raise," and petar(d) refers to an explosive device used in siege warfare. Hamlet uses the example of the engineer (the person who sets the explosive device) being blown into the air by his own device as a metaphor for those who schemed against Hamlet being undone by their own schemes.