There Goes the Neighborhood…(Hopefully Not Literally)

Coming home from the grocery store last night, I was surprised to see a news van sitting in the parking lot of the neighborhood elementary school. Barring the occasional kid setting off a firework at the playground or a big storm, things are relatively peaceful around here. So while it was odd to see the news van, I figured the local news, starved for stories, was doing something on back-to-school or a feel-good story about a local teacher. Perhaps they were actually at the park across the street, the larger of the two neighborhood parks.

And then, I got to the park across from my house and saw a second news van, the reporters standing around and preparing a story for air.

Using my years of legal training, I deduced something was up.

I pulled into my driveway and fished my cell phone out of my purse to check the news, now assuming that the city government had made some decision about the local parks. And then, I saw that I was wrong.

So, so wrong.

It turns out, someone had LEFT TWO PIPE BOMBS IN THE PARK ACROSS THE STREET FROM MY HOUSE.

Two bombs.

In the park where I walk Choppy twice every day.

See those gates in the picture above? That’s where Chris, the park’s caretaker, found the first of the pipe bombs (and the police later discovered the second). I walk right past there every single day.

As I found out this morning while walking Choppy (in the park where they found two pipe bombs), Chris saw something she assumed was garbage in front of the gates, and put it in the back of the utility cart she drives around the two neighborhood parks – she does this a hundred times a day with all sorts of garbage.

This time, however, she thought about the piece of garbage and called the police while she was at the larger neighborhood park, which happens to be across the street from the neighborhood elementary school.

And that’s where the story linked to above picks up (note my crack reporting on the rest of the story that the reporters didn’t pick up. Mostly, though, I was just gossiping with Chris like I do every morning. Also? I may just have discovered that news reporting is just gossip with a byline).

Thankfully, no one was hurt. Apparently, the only person who was ever in danger was Chris, who told me she was sick yesterday about the whole situation, and so glad that she was the one who found the bomb and not a kid. Unsurprisingly, it was also the most exciting day she has had in her years of working at the park.

So, it turns out, maybe things aren’t quite as peaceful as I thought.