Weeknotes: March 25-29, 2024

A warm spring evening invites a walk. Hands in tattered jean jacket pockets, eastward over the Forest Street Bridge, still partly under construction, but open to traffic. I wave to my neighbors who are crossing on the other side, then hop over a pile of debris where the unfinished sidewalk ends. Up the hill past the old ladder company and the brewpub. Daffodils that survived a frigid weekend skirt an old oak on the easement. A trio of kids lazily bobs on a front yard trampoline while their two dogs rush over to the fence to check me out. At first they downplay my passing, but the larger dog gives a sudden bellow and soon both are chasing me the length of their territory. I jaywalk south by the corner store where a man in a black tracksuit emerges swinging a plastic sack of beer. It's 5:00 and everyone is knocking off for the day. At a small white house a 12-foot Home Depot skeleton dominates the yard. With nowhere to store it during the non-October months, it gets dressed up in the costumes of each season like a concrete porch goose. They'd better remove its red beard and leprechaun hat. It's almost Easter. Across the street a young mom navigates her tiny, tottering daughter past the elementary school entrance that I mostly know as my polling place. The lost turtle signs are still up on several telephone poles. Ground zero for Ypsilanti's lost reptiles.