Vortex at Eleven

By the time I strolled into the morning assignment meeting, the dry erase board was slathered in untimely demises and the suits were looking to me for something happy. It being Monday I was fresh out of happy, so I offered the one observation I’d formed on the drive in to the station. “Sure is windy!” Looking back, it was clearly a tactical error. Having misjudged the level of editorial desperation in the room, I’d made the rookie mistake of pitching a story I didn’t much want to produce. Okay, so three words isn’t exactly a pitch, but I should have known better than to say that much around a bunch of housecats eager to get back to their chew-toy filled cubicles. I’d barely gotten those four syllables out of my mouth before they were etched in Magic-Marker under my name. Only then did I wisely back out of the room, grateful I hadn‘t burped out something worse, like ‘undertaker fashion’ or ‘colostomy bag‘.

‘Wind, it is’ I thought, gathering my gear together. Not sure where to take my pictures, I loaded up Unit Four and crawled behind the wheel anyway. Merging onto the interstate, I couldn’t help but notice the wind had died down. So I drove. I drove past construction crews and inmate work-gangs, past the usual cast of hardhats I employ for illustrating inclement weather. Trusting Unit Four to find the vortex, I couldn’t help but look to Greensboro’s modest skyline in the distance. There among the slab towers of the Gate City blew a gnarly wind indeed, lusty gusts whipping through corridors of aging concrete. Best of all, a lump of humanity would soon pour from every revolving door in search of lunchtime sustenance. All of which explains why there may have been a lenslinger sighting downtown today. Twas just I, picking pebbles and leaves out of my teeth as the silk-tie set dispensed with the wind-driven opinion.

I’ve whipped up worse.