Last week, we posted photos of some toys and Garfields on and near the Carroll Street and Union Street Bridges over the Gowanus. Last night, someone posted a comment that needs to be run as its own item. The writer says he/she is responsible and explains the original of the stuffed Garfields and toys. If true, it’s interesting. If not, well, it’s still interesting:

Well if you want to know the truth…the Garfield family lived in the musty basement of the Canal Bar along with the fischer-price toys. When my grandmother died, I cleaned out her house and couldn’t bring myself to part with my childhood collections. I put them in the basement of the 3rd Avenue apartment (I lived there for 3 years) and left them there when I moved to Crown Heights (which was a stupid idea). Well anyway, I didn’t last in the Heights for more than 9 months, lucky I even made it out of there alive… But having been vacated from 3rd Avenue apartment for 9 months, the owner of the bar said I just had to get my stuff out of the basement. I went. The answer was to purge. What was I ever going to do with a tote box full of garfields? They certainly wouldn’t fit the decorating scheme of my new residence…a victorian country house on eastern Long Island. Not wanting to throw away my childhood, and being too lazy to schlep them to the Salvation Army, and knowing that no self-respecting Park Slope parent would fish them out of a box for their brood if I were to leave them on 5th Avenue…I did the only thing I could do. Together with my friends (former neighbors; current residents of the aparment above the canal bar, we disposed of the garfields down by the Gowanus. In a late night covert operation, we climbed the truss of the bridge to create an impromptu garfield totem pole.

Alas, my childhood toys have found a home. The garfields seem to have dwindled in number which means people are probably taking them. That makes me happy. Give them a good home on Garfield place (hardy har har). As for me, I am enjoying the country life that long island affords, where my new water view is of the bay and fire island, an odorless experience contrasting that of the canal. Fairwell Brooklyn in all of your overpriced, overhyped, and tragically hip glory. I’ll miss you! Our relationship has become too intense Brooklyn, we need to take a break. But we will get back together. As soon as I make enough money to live in a neighborhood where I wont have to live with the guilt and shame of being a “gentrifier.” Goodbye Gowanus fish…and hello to beaches, farmstands, sleepy LIRR commutes (and the occasional split level ranch house which makes me want to consider a career in arson.)

There you have it.