Reverse stealing

You know that mythical time that old people talk about where no one locked their doors? When the streets were safe for your kids to walk to school? When the bodies of the people who tried to sell methamphetamine in your town were found floating down the river?

Well, by virtue of some kind of eddy in the space-time continuum, Rossland has remained in that time. There are several virtues to this unusual temporal location. First off, old people can't say "Back in my day ..." about Rossland, because we already are back in their day. A few weeks ago I watched a semi trailer containing thousands of litres of sulfuric acid slow to crawling speed behind a parade of small children wearing reindeer antlers as they performed the annual "Reindeer Prance" down the main street of town. That street happens to be a highway and a fairly significant trucking route for the chemical wastes generated from the lead smelter in a nearby town called Trail. In much of the "modern" world, small children and large vehicles filled with corrosive liquids would be considered an unusual and problematic combination. In Rossland, they are considered a typical part of the celebration of Christmas.

Another neat thing is that no one seems to lock anything. The other day I opened the door to my car (which had been sitting unlocked in a public car park all day), started the engine, left the car running while I went to the bank, returned to the car (which was now warm and demisted) and drove off, all without having to worry about it being stolen.

In fact, things are so topsy turvy here that today I indulged in a bit of reverse stealing. I went to someone's house, knowing that they wouldn't be there, entered the building, slipped a large sum of cash into someone's backpack and went on my merry way. Ahh the past. It really was a better time.