Monday, April the 26th, 2004

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Dobson in Residence

One of the more arresting facts about Dobson is that he spent a five-year period living in an evaporated milk factory in Winnipeg. Such was the hold on him of this location that he devoted no less than sixteen pamphlets to it. According to the statistician Aloysius Nestingbird, Dobson wrote more words about this factory than on any other topic. What was it about the place that exerted such a fascination upon Dobson? How significant is it that, during his stay there, the factory was still functioning, producing thousands of tins of evaporated milk every week, and not, as it is today, an abandoned ruin populated only by screeching birds? Was the workforce aware that the pamphleteer had taken up residence in an unused room on the mezzanine floor, and that he had attached his own design of bolts and latches to the door to prevent his being disturbed? Or that the carefully-lettered sign on the door, reading “S Q Perkins, Janitorial Padré”, was a fake of Dobson's devising? Was Dobson responsible for the occasional small theft of a few tins of evaporated milk noted in a big ledger by the management's security team? Was it really necessary for the security team to march about the premises in gangs of four, dressed in uniforms not unlike those of a fascist junta, accompanied by howling, slavering dogs, each as tall as a ten-year-old? Were the dogs skittish when taken to their kennels at the end of a security tour? Did a wet-behind-the-ears junior evaporated milk technical consultant take the rap for the missing tins? Was he dismissed and did he have his epaulettes thrown into the shredder? What in the name of heaven was Dobson doing in that room for five years? Why are the answers to these cogent questions entirely absent from Dobson's pamphlets? And, most importantly, what birds screech there now?