Dear reader,
I grew up in the city. Not New York or Chicago, but the city. Or
a city, anyway. In a residential neighborhood. We had streets and stores. I didn't have to walk too far to get to a bus stop to get on a bus that would take you nowhere you wanted to be. The air never smelled like manure. (Except for on Burrito Night at Big Jimmy's.) I went to college and got a degree in something that involved reading a lot of poetry, not all of it in English. I was pretty sure I was going to live and die in the city, and that suited me fine.
Then a couple of funny things happened. First, I got a job in a rural community. I didn't think they made communities this rural in this country anymore. And to my initial surprise, I loved it. After not too long, I stopped thinking about it as a "rural" community, and just started thinking about it as a community.
And then I was tricked into buying a house. No, that's not exactly right--I knew I was buying a house. I was tricked into buying this neighborhood. See, this neighborhood looks like the neighborhood I grew up in. There are some trees, but not as many as you would expect. People mow their grass and put tacky things in their front yards. The houses are fairly close together. You can walk to the nearest liquor store and back in case of emergency.
My first indication that all was not as it should be was the suspicious number of riding lawn mowers. In my parents' neighborhood, if someone had a riding lawn mower, they were either 70 years old or legendarily lazy. But all of my neighbors have them. And one of them is ALWAYS mowing. The people across the street have mowed their lawn twice a week since the snow melted.
My next clue was the expectation that I would have a gun, a chainsaw, or both. I didn't have either one of these things: fueled by video games played indoors, I thought these things were used more or less exclusively for killing zombies. I do have a hammer--two, in fact--but they belong to my wife, who uses them for framing and hanging her artwork. I have heard people firing guns in a manner that suggested they were trying to stop an army of undead deer slowly advancing into my back yard.
And then came the dead giveaway--the burning leaves. Every fall, my parents would have us rake all the leaves to the front edge of the lawn, and a few days later, they would be gone. My mom told me that a truck came and took them to a community composting center. But then, she also told me that the tooth fairy took my teeth and left me small change for them, so I didn't really believe her. As far as I knew, leaves stayed on the ground for a set period of time, and then sublimated, like dry ice. But my neighbors burn their leaves. I have a lot more to say about that, but for the time being, let it be noted that that's how I came to know for sure that, appearances notwithstanding, my house was not in the city.
Now I have all sorts of things to contend with that my upbringing never really prepared me for. Home maintenance and repair. Neighborhood relations. Tools. Leaf burning. In fact, my upbringing hasn't prepared me for much, except sitting on my duff reading blogs.
This realization led to the birth of this project. I can read blogs with the best of them. I understand things written in blogs. A moment's consideration, and hey presto! An idea. I'll put the things about living here I don't understand onto a blog. Later when I read them, I'll understand them. Maybe I'll go so far as to create another account so I can leave myself snarky comments about how everybody knows the proper etiquette when someone's Bobcat is blocking your driveway, and that way I'll be able to get helpful advice from myself.
So, if you've come along from the ride, don't be shy about tossing (please) politely-worded ridicule, or even better, helpful advice my way.
