2 scenes of the Whitaker

Kennett Peterson
2 scenes of the Whitaker

A big, dark brown barn style house overlooks a lush yard in the Whitaker neighborhood on Madison Street in Eugene. The two-story house is filled with large windows, through which potted plants inside suck in sunlight. In front of the house lies a vegetable garden so massive, it takes up the entire front yard. A concrete path runs in and around the vegetable garden to a white front door, newly painted. The neighbor’s fat white and orange cat meanders through the garden and across the path to the side of the house, which is wrapped in grape vines. The cat sniffs something on the ground and disappears behind a wooden castle fortress, designed for the homeowner’s kids to play in. The scene’s backdrop is a tree and house filled skyline, and while currently the house is bathed in sunlight, a dark, ominous rain cloud is approaching from the west.

If you were to turn around 90 degrees to the south, a different picture would stand before you. The wet street, void of cars but full of decomposing brown and yellow leaves, goes straight off into the distance to the base of a tall, ugly cement structure. The structure is a factory, with a few broken, dirty windows scattered around on its smooth gray surface. It is multiple stories high, and is the only thing in view that breaks the natural skyline of trees. On top of the factory sits a mess of tangled pipes and vents, spewing steam and smoke into the sky. The yellow pipes surround an American flag, as if mimicking the domination that corporate America has on the 50 states. Temporarily, the factory sits under a blue patch of sky, sun shining down on it as if blessed. But to the west, like the barn house, a dark black mountain of rain clouds are moving in quickly. A drop of rain comes down to the earth.