The Stain

I see The Stain every morning.

It is always there, rain or shine. It's been there for almost 4 years. I see it so often that I eventually quit thinking of it in the generic sense of the word and started referring to it as if The Stain were its proper name.

The Stain is located on the concrete on the public sidewalk in front of my house. It's roughly oval-shaped and about a foot across. As far as stains go, it's actually a pretty good one to have. The sidewalk where The Stain is located is whiter than the area around it. Dirt apparently does not like The Stain and stays away from it. If you're going to have stained concrete, The Stain is the type of stain you would want to have.

The Stain showed up sometime on the weekend of December 12, 2009. I know this because I wrote a blog about it at the time. Presumably a druggie had been attempting a meth manufacturing process known as "shake & bake." This is where various chemicals are put into a handy plastic soda bottle in the hopes that the resulting reaction will create a version of meth. Unfortunately those chemicals tend to be a bit volatile and will sometimes catch fire or melt the container or both. The latter consequence apparently happened on that particular December weekend in 2009.

And when a person finds himself or herself holding a flaming Mountain Dew bottle, they tend to want to get rid of it as fast as possible. In this case, the nameless, faceless druggie tossed it on the sidewalk in front of my house where whatever chemicals were inside leached into the concrete. The Stain was born.

So every morning, I go out and retrieve our newspapers and say hello to The Stain.

Initially, I tried to wipe out the stain. That was back before I didn't think of it as something worthy of a proper name. I pressure washed the entire sidewalk not once, but twice in an effort to make it go away. While that made the surrounding concrete whiter, in a few short weeks the area around The Stain would get dirty again while it stayed the same.

It appears to be impervious to dirt. It is practically super human as far as stains go. I don't know a lot about meth, but it seems to me these druggies are missing a surefire way to make a load of cash legally that they could then use to buy whatever drugs their addiction desired.

If they could recreate the chemical recipe they spilled on my front walk, it could be sold as a concrete sealer with "miraculous dirt repelling properties." They could make a small fortune. I'd buy a five-gallon container of the concoction if they had it at Lowes or Menards. I think that would be enough to coat my entire driveway, plus the public sidewalk out front.

While I've come to terms with The Stain, I'd still like to see it gone.