Tuesday, April 01, 2008
I Need Some Urban Renewal
So today I was driving down the street leading into my neighborhood, when....wait, let me set this up. There's history here.
When we bought our home in 1995, we spent every last dime we had to get it. If you've been here, you know it's a pretty nice home, in a neighborhood of pretty nice homes. The builder was known at the time for building massive numbers of inexpensive homes, and his son was a custom home builder. Dad and son teamed up for this subdivision, with the result being the really nice places you see here now. But that was this subdivision. Immediately adjacent to it, Dad built one of his usual collections of cheap cracker boxes. We bought very early in the build up, before the other subdivision was really started. By the time the other homes began to take shape, we were already in ours, just a block away from the rapidly developing crackerboxville. Not only were they a block away, anybody coming to our home would have to drive through crackerboxville to get to us.
Oh well, we're easy. We got over it. There have been a few households that got run down over there, some questionable characters from time to time, but things went overwhelmingly just fine.
Until now.
Every time I drive home now, I go past this one house where there are always a bunch of guys in wifebeaters hanging around in the cluttered garage, door wide open, smoking, admiring one another's tatoos, and guzzling beer. The cars have begun collecting in earnest, as if there's 40 people living there. Many have the family name written in huge Old English letters on the back glass, or those dumbass decals that say mi familia and display stick figures of parents, children, dogs, cats, iguanas, or whatever. Maneuvering through there is a DWI test in itself, especially with 14 kids darting around. I know it won't be long now till there's a guy pushing around one of those little popsicle handcarts over there.
But it gets worse. Today, as I cleared the gauntlet, I saw three beater cars in the driveway next door to them. Every one of them had a Pittsburgh Steelers decal on the black glass.
We're screwed.
|
When we bought our home in 1995, we spent every last dime we had to get it. If you've been here, you know it's a pretty nice home, in a neighborhood of pretty nice homes. The builder was known at the time for building massive numbers of inexpensive homes, and his son was a custom home builder. Dad and son teamed up for this subdivision, with the result being the really nice places you see here now. But that was this subdivision. Immediately adjacent to it, Dad built one of his usual collections of cheap cracker boxes. We bought very early in the build up, before the other subdivision was really started. By the time the other homes began to take shape, we were already in ours, just a block away from the rapidly developing crackerboxville. Not only were they a block away, anybody coming to our home would have to drive through crackerboxville to get to us.
Oh well, we're easy. We got over it. There have been a few households that got run down over there, some questionable characters from time to time, but things went overwhelmingly just fine.
Until now.
Every time I drive home now, I go past this one house where there are always a bunch of guys in wifebeaters hanging around in the cluttered garage, door wide open, smoking, admiring one another's tatoos, and guzzling beer. The cars have begun collecting in earnest, as if there's 40 people living there. Many have the family name written in huge Old English letters on the back glass, or those dumbass decals that say mi familia and display stick figures of parents, children, dogs, cats, iguanas, or whatever. Maneuvering through there is a DWI test in itself, especially with 14 kids darting around. I know it won't be long now till there's a guy pushing around one of those little popsicle handcarts over there.
But it gets worse. Today, as I cleared the gauntlet, I saw three beater cars in the driveway next door to them. Every one of them had a Pittsburgh Steelers decal on the black glass.
We're screwed.
