Timber

A giant fell last week, right across the street from us.

The easternmost of a pair of stately Norway spruces had died over the past year or so. It was a gradual death, and needles and twigs have been sprinkling from it this whole time.

And instead of letting the tree fall on its own and having insurance pay for any damages and cleanup (such as potential damages to our property), the landlord who owns the property hired some dudes to cut it down. And despite their filthy dirty mouths and lack of protective clothing and eyewear, they actually did a good job. They cut it down on Saturday, August 8.

Between then and now, they have cut off the branches, sliced up the trunk, and hauled the whole thing away on a trailer. Two heavy loads.

Today, the landlord, per his usual style, scalped the grass under it really good. His riding mower made a lot of racket because of all the sticks and little branches that remained. But whatever. It's his lawn mower and his lawn. (Such as it is.)

Sue and I took pictures as they cut down the tree. Sue, with her awesome camera and more-awesome timing, got the nifty-cool sequences. I took pictures from our second-floor window. It was pretty amazing to see that huge tree go down.

. . . Next, I’ll tell you a little about the history of these particular trees and the shrimpy little house they have towered over for about as long as I’ve been on this earth.

New Neighbors

First, sorry for the little delay here between posts. I’ve been kind of busy. I didn’t want to leave you hanging after the last post, but there you go. Remember, quality is more important. Well, at least I think so.

I hope I don’t need to write about our neighborhood ugliness anymore. Now that I’ve written about it, I can just reference it and link to it in future posts. But now I’ve set the stage: transitional neighborhood. We’ve learned to be very skeptical each time new tenants move in nearby.

So late last fall we got new tenants next door to us. Again. Once again, the landlord had told us he thought we’d like them. We were skeptical. We’ve just learned it.

This is the house that is very close to ours; we share a driveway with them. It’s the house my grandma grew up in, one of three homes my great-grandpa had built on the street.

Our first contact was when a fellow next door called out to us: “Hey, what day is the trash pickup here?” No introductions, no “pardon me’s.” Very abrupt. I called back my answer: Tuesdays and Fridays, starting as soon as 7 a.m. “Okay, thanks.”

Was he the new neighbor? I thought the landlord had told me a disabled woman was going to be living there. Okay, so maybe he was someone who came over to help her. He always drove the van with the disabled hang tag. There was a big bumper sticker on the back with the name of some Christian church on it. Maybe he was a volunteer who was helping her. Hmmm.

We saw people go in and out of the house. “Maybe they’re all pitching in to help the lady in there,” we thought. Never saw the lady.

Then one morning in January I was up in my office working on a manuscript. I have what amounts to a third-story window right next to my computer. And that morning it was starting to snow—heavily, dramatically. It was mostly flurries; big clots of fluffy snow blowing around in all kinds of circles and spirals through the air. Some of it sticking. We got a little accumulation out of the deal, but not anything serious.

Anyway, I kept looking out at that magical snowfall, and then something caught my eye. It was the neighbors, down there in their kitchen, zipping open the kitchen-window miniblinds. There was a sudden change from a white reflection of outdoor light to the darkness of the kitchen interior.

That’s what caught my eye. But what held it was what I saw next. It was a little girl, about four or five, looking out at the magical snow flurries just as I had. I saw her eyes and mouth go “Wooow!”

And then I saw a woman move up behind her, stroke her hair, put her hands on the girl’s shoulders, and then give her a little hug from behind.

It wasn’t like I was spying on them; I couldn’t help it. It just seemed so warm, and caring, and real, and full of life.

I was impressed.

Especially in the neighborhood that I just described in my last most, where parents use the “f-word” at their kids—when they’re paying attention to them—but more often than not they simply ignore their children, turn them out to play outdoors the way people used to put their cats out at night.

So this just floored me, and the vision remains with me to this day.

There is more I’m going to write, but this is just the introduction.

On the Street Where We Live

I think I’ve mentioned that our neighborhood is, um, “transitional.” We’re in a historic neighborhood close to the center of town, and you know what that means: nonresident landlords who purchase properties on speculation, renting cheap, putting the least they can into maintenance. As the properties deteriorate, the landlords rent more and more cheaply, and the quality of our neighbors has declined along with the neighborhood in general.

Since moving here, I’ve learned the phrase “demolition by neglect,” which means that by the time the landlord wants to raze the formerly quaint old building, it’s in such sad shape that it’s not worth saving, that they can actually make more money off the property by paving it and charging for surface parking than they can for renting the decrepit old house. By the time the landlord tears down the building, most people are glad to see it go. This process is so painful to watch.

One of the hardest things to take was when the last true oldtimer on our street passed away. When Dorothy died, her nephew and other survivors sold her property to one of these landlords.

And ever since he’s bought the house, he’s had a string of dysfunctional, immature, helpless, loud, LOUD, messy, destructive tenants. We’ve seen drug sales over there, and oh-so-much-more. I can’t begin to guess the number of times we’ve called the police about things going on over there.

The tenants occupying the home currently are on their way to being evicted; the court date is June 11, and I hear we have ten days beyond that before they are booted out. I understand they haven’t paid their rent since March.

I don’t think any of them in that house work. They are up all night, playing their car stereo, complete with subwoofers, as loudly as possible. All night long. I’m so sick of Pink Floyd and heavy metal. We call the police with noise complaints, the police come and talk to them; then the police leave, and the tenants scream at us (“Bitches! Fag bitches!”), then spike the noise level at odd intervals, slam their car doors and hoods. Just to keep us awake.

And that’s just one house on our street. In the eight years that we’ve lived here, we’ve had our cars vandalized more than once, we’ve had guns fired across our property, we’ve been flipped off, screamed at, and we’ve had a flower bed trampled.

We’ve seen neighbors have bonfires of trash in their front yard, into which they’ve thrown Coke cans filled with gasoline. We constantly hear rap cars going “boom-boom” down the street, crappy cars, rattling doors and fenders with each low pulse; police cars and ambulances are always responding to calls within a block of our house. Once a week it seems the cops or the EMTs are here for something.

Last fall, we had one slum building—an old house that had been broken into a six-plex ca. the 1970s—burn down. It was just three houses from ours. It was arson, from angry, drunken, squatter non-tenants who were angry they were being made to leave—and we were incredibly happy when we heard the building was a total loss. No more habitat for low-life humanity on that particular little patch of land.

On the bright side, we have an active neighborhood association, composed of the owners of many local businesses as well as others interested in the neighborhood, including some resident landowners. And the neighborhood association is making progress.

It’s going to take a lot of work here in our ’hood to make it into a place where we’re truly comfortable, and there are all kinds of things that will help. Carrots for some, sticks for others. Political work, legal work, social work, economic work, sweat work.

Anyway. I wanted to provide this background so that I can tell you more soon, because there have been some developments that have been blowing my mind and opening my heart.