Have you ever been to Chicago? I traveled through there once on a trip to Yellowstone when I was but a lad of perhaps 9 or 10 years of age. I remember it like it was yesterday… I observed the bleak tenement buildings from the highway, the dreary carbon-polluted sky casting a dour light upon the weathered brick buildings inhabited by poor hapless souls cursed with the dreadful misfortune of being born into a life of utter penury. No electricity, no food, no work—it was truly a bleak existence, living in Chicago, if one can even call it living. Existing would be a more apt description, with the denizens of the city simply doing all that they could to survive from one day to the next off of whatever meager scraps they could find.
I distinctly recall one scene from my time passing through Chicago—one that was no doubt commonplace for the people of Chicago, but stood out to me nonetheless. There was a pair of youths similar to myself in that they were roughly my age (though neither had been given the opportunity to obtain a basic public education, bearing in mind the forsaken nature of the penniless wasteland) perched upon the street curb devouring a modest repast of fresh rat meat. As the two dined voraciously upon the poor hunch-backed vermin, not unlike a pair of hyenas devouring the carcass of a slain wildebeest, I took notice of their appearance: two young boys clothed in rags crudely sewn from scraps of discarded cloth and burlap begrimed with the filth that seemed to be ever-present in the grubby streets of Chicago. Their ragged attire did little to provide warmth, leaving their distended stomachs swollen from years of malnutrition to be exposed to the cool city air. Their feet, callused and tough from traversing the garbage-strewn streets of Chicago, were bare and filthy, leaving the two youths susceptible to illness.
Accompanying the two boys was a mongrel of indeterminate breed. It was dog of small to medium size, its fur perhaps born an exuberant white tone, yet tattered and brown from years of soaking in the noisome odors and filth characteristic of the environment in which it dwelled. Like its owners, the canine creature was riddle with fleas, with large patches of fur eaten away by mange. This plague of skin parasites helped to reveal the frail body of the creature, its skin pulled taut against its ribs, hip bones knobby and exposed upon its pelvis, quivering ever so slightly from the constant pain associated with arthritis. One of the boys, with hands wet and bloody from handling the half-eaten rat, dropped a handful of innards before their canine companion. It fed eagerly upon the discarded viscera, ignorant of the pathetic state of its own existence, leaving a bloody stain upon the cracked and disjointed sidewalk. The two boys enjoyed watching the animal eat, not out of cheap fascination watching a creature eat the inedible discards of a lowly vermin, but out of sheer gladness that the poor animal was finally consuming a rare nugget of sustenance.
It was then and there, watching these two boys and their dog devour a rat carcass, that I came to understand the true horror surrounding the hellish urban wasteland known as Chicago. These two boys feasting upon the carcass of an ensnared rat were a microcosm for the city as a whole. I should consider myself lucky to have escaped with my life, given the wanton nature of the city and its ravenous and utterly destitute inhabitants.