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22 October 1994
Period 5
Descriptive Essay
Mrs. Embree

Ruthlessly, the construction crew appears on the scene. They walk
through bushes and carelessly tear up the lawn. Dominating the street with orange vehicles, the men block traffic while they begin to dig. The backhoe is so powerful, it rips through the pavement like a giant Gila Monster as he hunts in the sand. The noise is a hollow blend of metal on metal and the low rumble of a diesel engine.

Watching from my window, the majority of the machinery is cut off from my view, as it slowly destroys the road before my home. All that is visible is the haunting neck and head of the beast. It rips through the ground, as if shearing the flesh off a much weaker enemy. As it surfaces to spit out the remains, each time, deeper, still, the head jerks forward and back with its primitve, almost mechanical movements. The blacktop, its prey, is cast carelessly about the street, with total disregard for– anything. The hole is filled in and a flat, metal plank covers the abyss for the evening. The beast departs.

I venture out of doors to examine the battlefield. The air is an
amalgamate of dense, choking diesel fumes and light, dry dust from the hole, at least one man deep, by the time the beast was through. The metal makes haunting, deep, ominous thunder as smaller, gentler creatures roll over its unbalanced comers. Darkness sets in until another light, another ambush.

Modern-day Commentary

Wow, she was quite the taskmaster, making me hand in this descriptive essay on the same day as my lengthier journal article on The Simpsons!

While I don’t specifically remember writing this essay, I have a very strong recollection of the trauma that this sort of “ambush” would cause me back then. Thinking over what this referred to, being a senior in high school at the time, I would imagine it was the addition of sewer pipes into our neighborhood somewhere in that time frame. I was the type of person who got very tied to things as they were, and observed large changes to my environment with great regret. Even now, I get very upset at the disregard that workers such as these use when cutting a tree, plowing snow, or paving a road.

I used to “feel bad” for things like I would people or animals. I remember when I moved toward compact discs, I felt sick for my cassettes, as if they had some emotional attachment to me, the way I did to them. The same sorts of feelings would come to me when I upgraded from “regular” Nintendo to Super Nintendo, or found a new stuffed animal that would become more important to me than a previous friend. As I’ve aged, I’ve tried to make a conscious decision to curb those emotional attachments, but it hasn’t been hard. In many cases, I’ve found, simply taking a picture of something outdated or out-of-use, makes it easier for me to part with it. From time to time, I might look through my photos, stumble upon one of a particularly meaningful t-shirt or Trapper Keeper, and it brings me joy, not sadness.

I like the imagery that I use throughout the essary, that I stuck with till the end, in referring to passing cars as creatures of a calmer species than the construction vehicles. Though some of the writing continues the trend I’ve observed in these throw-backs: I was a very melodramatic writer. Each emotion seems like it’s ramped up just to the brink of ridiculousness, and I might read it as such if it were some other author. But knowing myself, I have a sympathy for this author, this little guy who wanted the world to stay the same to the end, even if it meant using a septic tank for the long haul.