Perhaps I should first say that I intend no disrespect to all the rats out there. My perspective might have been different if I had learned of Remy, the star of Disney Pixar’s Oscar winning movie “Ratatouille”. You see Remy was a passionate rat who thirsts for a sip of the good life despite the questionable tastes of his rodent relatives. Remy grew up beneath a five-star Parisian restaurant and inherited a taste for fine food. His culinary ambitions only angered his practical father, who wished his son could just eat garbage like everyone else.
As I spent almost two years in or near Paris in the mid 1950's I could have identified with his desire to leave behind the foods of his youth and acquire a more discerning palate. But I didn’t. So my feeling about rats was somewhat tainted with malice toward most rodents in general and rats in particular.
Before the closing and sealing of the city dump ground, rats were a much greater problem in Brookfield than today. Rats were so plentiful no one seemed to care if a group of guys (lots of gals, too) made a trip to the dump grounds, out by Yellow Creek bridge, for a bit of target practice. The rats picking their way through the refuse were the target of many such “sporting events”.
The rats often migrated into the residential area in the north central portion of east Brookfield with many of them finding their way to Main Street. You didn’t see them during the day, but late at night they could be often be seen running along the gutters of Main street near the underpass.
At times several friends and I would find ourselves sitting on the curb in front of the La Pierre Hotel (now the Linn County Leader building) late at night , talking about “whatever”. One such night, Keith, Phillip, Jesse, John and I were chatting away when we noticed a rat in the gutter across the street. The rat had come up the incline from the underpass and was making his way north on Main. Conversation shifted to how fast were rats.
It was agreed they were pretty fast and we discussed the possibility of chasing one down. For some reason that night I was wearing my Army combat boots. As the rat came farther up the street we decided we would make the attempt at chasing him down. Three of us took the challenge and we started after the rat. It was very fast, but I cut a diagonal run and got close enough to kick. It didn’t survive. This became the story of the “Great Rat Race”.
You can read Paul's entire column in the 3/10/10 edition of the Linn County Leader.
Brookfield, Mo. —
