House of Burgess

If you've never been to the fair city of Ukiah, School Street, where the Ukiah Daily Journal resides, is one of the nicest parts of town. I take my dog on walks here when it's not raining and when the weather is warm the farmer's market sets up shop on a block-long strip Saturday mornings. When you think of an idyllic small town scene featuring unique local businesses, that's School Street.
The parking for Journal employees sits to side and behind the front of the building on School Street, so I barely ever enter through the front door. Almost every time I have though I've noticed a single concrete bench that sits just in front of the handicap-accessible ramp always has something scandalous on it, in stark contrast to the Mayberry-esque feel of the street it calls home.
I've come to call this the Party Bench.
My first experience with the Party Bench was when I had stepped outside to talk on my cell phone one day while I was at work. I walked by the bench and saw a business card sticking out from the side. Curious, I kicked it off with my foot and bent down to inspect it. It was a business card for a check cashing place. Nothing too off about that other than the fact that I consider check cashing businesses some of the most evil, predatory businesses in existence. (Have you ever actually seen their repayment terms? Outrageous!)
The next time I was out there about a week later I saw a flask-sized bottle of some type of vodka I had never heard of sitting defiantly on the Party Bench--and after attending Indiana University for four years, I thought I had seen every kind of cheap vodka. (Oh, Skol and Kamchatka, how I won't miss you.)
A month or two later I walked by the Party Bench again and this time I saw a lone film canister sitting on it. Knowing the bench's reputation, I was pretty sure it was something illicit. As I popped the top of the plastic cylinder open I found that I wasn't disappointed as it was packed to the gills with marijuana. I immediately walked inside and plopped it on the front desk, telling Linda, who works up front in Classified Sales, that if anyone came looking for their misplaced film canister of bud, they need to look no further. She later told me she dumped it out in the parking lot. (Sorry to be player hating, bench).
It's been a few months since the last incident and since then I've checked the Party Bench from time to time to see what other remnants of a potentially illegal good time it's been having lately. So far I haven't found anything. I can understand though--as George Costanza on "Seinfeld" learned, sometime's it's best to leave on a high note rather than continual trying to top yourself.