Cul de Sac by Richard Thompson for April 08, 2024

Alice is ready for the X-games

Philosophizing with Bennie and Dill, great way to start the day!

She’s a swell guy. You can expand on that. The times are out of joint.

the preschoolers of alice’s world have amazingly vocabularies

All those syllables. You guys are on a roll.

A STF (slip, trip and fall). Call Dewey, Cheetum and Howe!

I love this one! YEE HAW!

I remember when my friends and I would do that in the eighties!

It’s Ramp season! (Allium tricoccum)

Careful, Alice. That kind of daredevil action might lead to mild discomfort, and that is very, very dangerous.

At least, that’s what the experts claim, maybe.

We had a sidewalk like that. It was caused by tree roots. I don’t think anyone ever ran into the tree.

I would yell Yeehaw when we drove over a bumpy railroad track. my friend from Texas just rolled her eyes

In real life: we’ve had such a depression close enough to our house on the sidewalk for years, and the city works comes around year after year marking it with fluorescent paint spray to warn us, and then another person comes around marking it with a white paint spray to indicate that it should be replaced, and five years later it is still not done. Last year I called the councillor to find out when this part of the sidewalk will be done, and finally I have my answer: the works dep’t is waiting for more of them to heave, so that the whole street can be done all at once! What they did this spring, finally, is to shave off that sharp edge, so if you are walking you won’t trip over it…There are already at least ten or more of those indicators…

Well, it is springtime, which means the tube slide is growing exponentially. All that extra weight is probably causing the tectonic plates of the sidewalk to buckle. Cul de Sac has many natural wonders, and one natural horror- YEE HAW!

Uh-huh. In Chicago, somewhere on the northwest side, I believe, there is, in a square of the sidewalk, the….um, fossil…of a rodent of some description (the indentation of a squirrel or possibly large rat that died and somehow became embossed in the concrete). Dutiful (wait ‘til I catch my breath after guffawing) city workers from time to time fill in the fossil, only to have neighborhood fossil devotees clear out the patch and restore the beloved fossil. I dunno, don’t ask me; is there a moral, a lesson for the ages, a plea for therapy? Beats me. It’s Chicago.

Those are some mighty big words and matures thoughts for kindergarteners!!