The Gaseous Grave

Neon Memes • Laclede Gas has dug a grave in my front yard. OK―hyperbole. The rectangular excavation's depth falls short of the requisite 6 feet, and its width and length would likely accommodate only a child's casket. Still and all, for the rude surprise it first caused, it might as well harbor some sort of burial woe: I peeped out my living room window Monday morning, as I do every morning on waking, to find two settee-sized mounds of loam beside my bungalow's front walk, enclosed in paired strands of orange LACLEDE GAS COMPANY plastic tape secured to six rebar stakes―a boxing ring for gnomes. I have (no pun intended) no earthly idea when the company made that excavation Sunday, most of which I passed either greeting people on the magazine's behalf at the 2008 Saint Louis Art Fair in Clayton or working in my study with the stereo cranked; to the best of my recollection, neither did I receive any notification that such earthwork would occur. Of course, at least since the flood of '93, Laclede Gas has made even the imperious types at AmerenUE look like probity personified. When I grow up, I wanna be a utility. ―Bryan A. Hollerbach, Managing Editor