There's one thing nobody could ever recognize except keen observers with years of experience. Beside that is what used to be an orange plastic bag full of leaves and grass clippings with a pumpkin face to celebrate some long-gone Halloween but now has squatted and erupted so that it looks like the Wicked Witch right after Dorothy threw the water. Behind that is a small field of varicolored Easter crosses, some flat where they rotted off at the ground and some no longer crossed where they deteriorated at the duct tape. Santa tilts crazily among them, a dirt dauber nest stuck under his nose. Valentine's hearts droop and sag.
American flags flap in a sequence of shreds from all the fence posts on the place.
Why, Halley's Comet, of course. By Robb White To purchase a copy of the August 2000 issue, click here . Originally published in the August 2000 issue of Smithsonian . All rights reserved. All rights reserved.