10 12 09, Queen-sized mattress, Franklin/Cherokee

Item: Queen-sized mattress
Found: 10.12.2009
Location: SE corner of Franklin and Cherokee

Stained and sagging, leaning up against a brick wall as though on a cigarette break, this mattress is obviously rather worn out, well past its prime. Replaced by a presumably nicer model, this once proud “Spinal-Pedic” mattress was riding high atop a box spring in one of the many apartments on this block before it was thrown out in the cold by its heartless hipster overlord.

It may seem that its best days are behind it, but you can't keep a good mattress down. In this neighborhood, prospects are good that a still intact queen-size mattress will find a new life. Perhaps not as a resting place, but maybe as a wall for a lean-to, buttressed by a wooden shipping pallet, with a cardboard box for a roof. With the help of a few other cast-offs and a little elbow grease, this mattress could potentially be part of a cozy home. Or perhaps it could find a more exciting fate: this mattress is certainly large enough to conceal a dead body, and even though it would probably be set on fire, it would get to experience a few final, action-packed hours.

Sadly, even though economic times may seem as bleak now as they were during the Great Depression, the days of the Hooverville are long gone, and murderers tend to prefer to use mattresses that they are already acquainted with. The fact of the matter is that this mattress is most probably looking at a short stay out on the curb, followed by a long stay at the closest landfill. At least the mattress can take comfort in the fact that it has much greater utility than its old friend the box spring, whose kind is discarded far more frequently, and with much smaller appeal to the local transients.