Can you come out and play?

In Oklahoma I often hear the saying "If you don't like the weather, wait a minute", and it's true. I've been thinking about this concept in terms of the configuration of neighborhoods - specifically my neighborhood. I've learned that the face of the neighborhood changes from year to year. If I don't like something...just wait a year. It may resolve itself.


Our street is a short one - one block in length running east/west with about a dozen houses facing each other across a curbless river of blacktop. The street is bookended by north/south streets, but our block seems like a little community all its own.



In the five plus years we have lived there, the face of that community has changed. Two women have died of cancer, one elderly and one middle-aged. One elderly man, a respected fixture in the broader community of Bethany, died of a heart attack. At the time of his death he owned about 50% of the houses on the block and was a self-admitted lousy landlord. Since his death all of his properties have been sold off, some to home owners, a few to other landlords.


Over the five years some homes have been renovated or repaired. Some have continued to deteriorate. But what has changed the most is the faces of the people who occupy the houses. The block has become more racially diverse. When we first moved in, we were shocked by several neighbors expressing their relief that we were not, shall we say, people of color, although it was expressed in a much more inappropriate way. We had just returned from living in post-apartheid Johannesburg, South Africa. We had told ourselves America didn't behave that way. Well, apparently some parts of America do.


Besides the racial mix, the other thing that has changed is the number of children. At one time there was one lone child, a spattering of teenagers, and a bunch of grumpy adults. Recently our street seems to have exploded with children. Children running and biking and shouting. Children climbing our fence and hiding behind our cars and running through our yard.


And I LOVE it! It feels so alive. Plus it provides great entertainment.


Just yesterday evening Mark, Tessa and I were watching television and surfing the Internet on our separate laptops when we noticed a small boy, stripped down to his shorts and running gleefully through our sprinkler. When the timer dinged and Mark went to turn the water off, the boy told Mark "That was fun! I'll be back tomorrow!". That cracks me up!


Of course, I have been heard to say "Where is that child's mother?" more than once and we don't allow them to run amok on our property. But we do let them run, and hide, and apparently - enjoy the sprinkler.


The sad part - I know very few names. In a world where we long for community, we live side by side with nameless people. Oh sure, we wave, we share a moment of frustration together when the city digs a big hole and doesn't come back for a week. A few men gather on the street to analyse the clouds when the tornado sirens sound. But we don't invite one another in for a cup of coffee. We don't know the names of the children.

I'm not sure what the remedy is. But in the mean time, I'm enjoying the ungraying of our street.

It's raining big, beefy, manly men

On March 5th I uploaded a picture of the notice from the city stating that they would replace our water main on that date. In city construction speak, that means "we will at some point in the next two to three months replace your water main." I had hoped to chronicle the excitement - woohoo- but it has been like watching toenails grow. Occasionally there were signs of some action when we returned home from work. A little spray paint here, a yellow flag there, some hieroglyphics on the road itself. A pile of sand and another of dirt unloaded at the corner, providing entertainment for the delight of the neighborhood children, and something new and different to blow through my front door with our recent high winds. Not much else. Until Good Friday.

On that day the manly men and their manly machines invaded our street, digging holes, putting in new pipe, and back filling with what was left of the sand and dirt. By yesterday morning they were at my house. I didn't leave early enough, and was trapped in the house for a few hours, my only option being to drive through my soggy front yard to escape. Darn. I had to stay home. I wasn't complaining.

Today I came home a little early from work and had to play dodge-the-large-earth-moving-machines-and-beefy-dudes-wielding-shovels with my car. As I write, we do not have water, the gas line is ruptured, and it's almost quittin' time. School just let out and all the little children are running the obstacle course, most having to circle almost to my front porch, trying to reach their respective homes. The joys of progress.

Frankly, I don't mind the mess if it means the city infrastructure is being updated. Our house was built in 1937 and I'm sure the water line is of the same age. The weird thing is that I've always loved the taste of our water. I'm wondering if it will taste the same after the leaking pipe has been replaced.

And I'm also quite sure that we are not getting curbs. And I so wanted to join the ranks of true suburbia and get curbs. Sidewalks are, I know, out of our league, but a curb seems a small thing to wish for.