Living in Camden Iron and Metal’s War Zone

Recently I have started to share Art Aware’s Blog. I am a cat living with the Professor who writes the blog. She doesn’t know I sneak onto the computer at night. The Professor writes about kids’ art. I write about the Professor and our lives together – an Art Aware/Life Aware perspective which now centers around the killer metal recycler in our neighborhood, Camden Iron and Metal.

Yesterday and last night, no CIM Giant Crusher activity. But being in its sound-war zone of crashing metal bombs, scraping front end loaders, UNcovered conveyor belts, etc. the ANTICIPATION of CIM’s Giant Crusher’s start-up is almost as bad as the operation itself. (I lie, nothing could be worse than that middle-of-the-night nightmare.)

We, the residents of South Camden, know the sound-horrors of living in war-torn countries, never knowing when the next bombardments will begin, how long they’ll last or when they’ll end.

The Professor and I took a 6:00 a.m. walk on this lovely Sunday morning. One half a mile from the Giant Crusher, tractors were shoveling shredded metal, providing the constant undertones of war for residents from Atlantic Avenue north to Beckett Street – not much sound to the south on Ferry Avenue. The Giant Crusher was at rest. The Professor took photos of what to expect in the future on any day, at any hour: piles of whole cars waiting to be conveyed to the Crusher.

You can see a giant grinder part. In the distance, you can see beautiful Philadelphia just across the Delaware, where residents are blissfully ignorant of the hell CIM is causing to the whole region environmentally.

We walk home on the railroad tracks past the Michael Doyle Fishing Pier and the proposed Phoenix Park, places where the air and water often are packed with particulates from CIM, State Metal, Holcim Cement, trash-to-steam and CCMUA and Mafco Licorice odors.

There is little wind, so in spite of it all, on this fine day, somehow we can appreciate fresh air that has snuck into the atmosphere and a clear blue sunlit sky.           Amen!