Neighborhood Stuff

Several years ago the “powers that be” in my town hired an outside agency to do some major analysis of our fair city. There were pages and pages of results for which our city fathers paid big bucks, but the only thing I remember from the whole report was that my neighborhood was destined to become a slum. Not exactly what I wanted to hear.

My town has a tendency to discard the old and move on to the new. This is evident with the housing situation. My fellow townspeople are making a major exodus away from the central district to the new subdivisions in the outlying areas of the city. Old houses are not in vogue here as they are in some other cities. Never was this more apparent than a few years ago when a developer bought up at least a square mile of beautiful architecture, razed it and put up shoddily built (in my humble opinion) campus housing.

My neighborhood, the future slum, was built in the 1950s and we have owned our house here since the early 1980s. Sturdy, three and four bedroom, brick homes; I would choose my house over any newly constructed home just for the workmanship alone. But unfortunately, the neighborhood isn’t what it was in the 1950s. This becomes apparent to me on my morning run. I pass houses where the owners or renters obviously take no pride in their home. Overgrown grass and weeds, junked cars and peeling paint are just a few of the signs of things to come. There are plenty of exquisitely kept homes; homes where the pride of ownership is evident, but sadly, many of these are sitting next door to a home that appears to house the Beverly Hillbillies before they struck oil.

A few observations and suggestions to my neighbors:

• There is a limit to how much crap one should have in their front yard. Five gazing balls, two fake deer (you are fooling no one), a wooden wishing well, a toy windmill, and pots and pots of fake plastic flowers is overkill. If you enjoy this crap so much please move it to the back yard where I don’t have to see it.
• There is a new invention called an edger, please use it.
• If your car won’t run - fix it or sell it or haul it off. It is causing an oil spill in your driveway that is beginning to rival the oil tanker Valdez.
• If you can see bare wood it is time to paint. The fourteen colors of peeling paint is not a good look.
• Take down your Christmas decorations.
• Take down your McCain/Palin signs. Obama won, get over it.
• If you must use a sheet for your front room curtain please use a solid color. A teenage mutant ninja turtle sheet just doesn’t do it for me.
• Trees look better if they are trimmed every decade or so.
• Your cat litter box really doesn’t need to be on your front porch and your dogs shouldn’t be let out in the front yard to do their business.
• Driveways and garages are for parking cars, lawns are for growing grass.
• I’m all for having an occasional party, but please pick up the beer cans and red plastic Solo cups the next morning. Your neighbors don’t want that blowing in their yards.

The next time you see a middle aged woman jogging past your house with a pained look on her face, wave; it just might be me.