Memorial for a dead coon

Walt has written before about those makeshift memorials that spring up within seconds of someone's being hit by a car, killed by a cop, shot by a gangbanger, or meeting any other sort of untimely demise. See "Looks like 'a pile of trash' to me too".

You know the kind of thing I mean: a big pile of wilting flowers, cutesy teddy bears and care bears, non-biodegradable balloons, crosses and candles too crude to be displayed in any church. Somehow, adding to the pile seems to make sad lonely people with no relationship to the dear departed feel that they have Done Something Good -- warned against the evils of drunk driving, demonstrated against racism, whatever.

To me, these memorials are just about the basest form of maudlin sentiment, contributing to the betterment of no-one except florists and owners of gift shops. And they do become piles of trash which eventually the municipality has to clean up.

Some residents of Toronto evidently share Walt's sense of the ridiculous, for yesterday some anonymous residents of a downtown neighbourhood set up a memorial for "Conrad", who died alone on a city sidewalk. And they did it while the corpse was still there! Here's a picture.

Yes, Conrad is (or was) a raccoon, one of Toronto's large and growing "Raccoon Nation". How he met his fate is unclear, but it took the city about 14 hours to remove the carcass. [Perhaps it was left there pour encourager les autres. Ed.] Meanwhile, the memorial grew up around it, with a nice framed picture being added, and a candle, as the sun sank behind the golden tower of the Royal Bank building. Shortly after 11 p.m. a city works truck swept up the memorial, and Conrad along with it.

Question from Ed.: Did Conrad have a last name? Not "Black", surely?

Looks like "a pile of trash" to me too

- What's dis yere? A pile of trash?
- NO, fool. Dat be a memorial to Mike Brown, killed by the racist Ferguson police!

- But it sho looks like trash. Look, you can even see where it been burned.
- Hey, dat was an accident. Somebody din't know dat if you puts candles next to teddy bears and balloons, dey gonna burn.

- Well why it lyin' all down da middle ob de street like dat?
- Fool! Din't I tell ya, all dem Ferguson people racist! Some honky done drove his car into de memorial.

Well, I guess it's all in the eye of the beholder. But "a pile of trash" was what it looked like to Officer Timothy Zoll of the Ferguson MO Police Department. At least, that's what he told a reporter for the Washington Post who called what about a tip that the trash had been trashed on Christmas Day by an unsympathetic (and doubtless white) motorist.

The Post  quoted Officer Zoll as saying, "I don't know that a crime has occurred. But a pile of trash in the middle of the street? The Washington Post is making a call over this?"

Seems to Walt like a good question, but the Post characterized the comment as... wait for it... racist. But St. Louis radio station KMOX later reported that Zoll told its reporter he had been misquoted and actually said that the memorial might have been destroyed by a motorist unfamiliar with the area who had mistaken it for a pile of trash.

That explanation didn't wash with the cop's bosses though. They said yesterday that "the officer admitted to Department investigators that he did in fact make the remarks attributed to him, and that he misled his superiors when asked about the contents of the interview."

For his sins of racial insensitivity and political incorrectness, Officer Zoll has now been placed on unpaid leave, while the investigation into the dastardly crime continues. 


City officials were at pains to note that police Chief Thomas Jackson kept investigating the statement even after Officer Zoll initially denied making it. "The City of Ferguson wants to emphasize that negative remarks about the Michael Brown memorial do not reflect the feelings of the Ferguson Police Department and are in direct contradiction to the efforts of City officials to relocate the memorial to a more secure location."

A more secure location? Walt suggests the Ferguson Memorial Sanitary Landfill. And my suggestion has nothing to do with the identity or race of the dear departed who was being "memorialized". It's just that I am sick and tired of seeing these unsightly and pointless "memorials" that pile up on the site of any sudden and public death.

The practice of leaving flowers, candles, teddy bears, balloons, crudely lettered signs and other detritus at the scene of  the accident or crime is maudlin, mawkish and pathetic. Pointless, too.

The only people who are made better off by these empty gestures are the sellers of toys, flowers, candles and what-have-you. For them, a sudden death -- particularly of a child or other "innocent" -- is better than Valentine's Day, Mother's Day and Christmas all rolled into one!

I don't know how, where or why this sloppy sentimental nonsense started, but I hope one day we'll see memorials, in the more dignified form of flowers and wreaths, confined to the cemeteries in which the victims are buried. Toys, balloons and suchlike dumped in the city streets deserve to be treated as... well... trash.