Things I'll Miss about Ann Arbor, Part 17

Take a look at this stretch of road and think about how it makes you feel:

If no strong emotions are coming to mind, take a long look at the picture, then close your eyes and imagine yourself driving down this stretch at 30 or 40 miles per hour, your favorite mix CD blasting loud enough to drown out the sound of the wind blowing through your open window. Feel anything yet?

I know. It just makes you want to eject that mix CD and toss it out your open window, doesn't it?

I go running and Jin-walking alongDhu Varren Road several times a week, and there's a stretch of road maybe 100 feet long that I've identified as a graveyard for lost music. In reality, the number of CDs I've found there (7 or 8, plus fragments) compared to the number of times I've actually traversed the stretch of road (well over a hundred, I'm sure) isn't all that impressive, but it is compared to the number of CDs I've found just lying on the ground anywhere else in Ann Arbor (0. Or 1, if you allow "Ann Arbor" to include "downtown Ludington," which I think I won't because a factor of infinity is much more impressive than a factor of 7 or 8 point however many fragments).*

I used to pass the CDs by, but last summer I had occasion to pick one up, and now my curiosity gets the better of me every time. I haven't yet found anything interesting - a CD of bird calls, a hip-hop mix CD that ought not to be listened to past about 5 seconds if you're sensitive to obscenity (like me), an unplayable copy of Poison's Greatest Hits, a sampler from some up-and-coming local group (I think - it's also mostly unplayable), and a couple that are too scarred from lying on the asphalt to be played. I have yet to find anything I feel like keeping for myself, but every CD I pick up feels like a new treasure.



I had a running theory for a little while that some kid out there was trying to get his music discovered. Although the bird calls didn't appear to support my theory, so many CDs in the same place seemed like the work of one suspect with a motive, not a random many. I imagined my guy spying out some record producer who lives over in the subdivision just west of this stretch of the road, observing that said record producer takes his dog out for a walk at 6:15 a.m. every day, and casually chucking out a burned copy of his most recent music onto the road in the hopes that a) the CD will withstand the chucking, b) the record producer will see it and pick it up, and c) the record producer will be clever enough to YouTube the lyrics to the song and learn the kid's name and contact him and ask if he can sign him to his label. But instead, along I come with my insatiable curiosity and snatch up the CDs before they ever make it into Mr. Record Producer's hand.

It's a stretch as far as theories go, but so far I have no other explanation for the CD graveyard.

It's been a little while since I've found a disc, playable or otherwise, along Dhu Varren, so this morning when I came across a CD on my run, I felt like the One Last Time gods were smiling down on me. It was another hip-hop mix (I think) and it froze my iTunes after about 20 seconds, but it still made my morning.


* I am fully aware of my questionable punctuation here.