Since our neighbor Tillie died almost three years ago, her former home has undergone several changes. One of the problems with living in an older neighborhood is builders are constantly on the lookout for an older home that they can buy, update and resell for an absurdly high price. And because our quaint little neighborhood is about twenty years behind on adopting a set of building codes to set limits as to what you can build or how big it can be, you never quite know what you’re going to get when people start building and remodeling on your street. Our biggest fear is that someone will come in and build an enormous home next to ours and people will drive by and think our house is the servants’ quarters for the house next door.
Anyway, my point is Tillie’s house has already had two different buyers. The first family that bought it did so for the sole purpose of renovating it and reselling it, which would have been great, except they had the taste of a Las Vegas showgirl.
This could have been due to the fact that the wife of the husband had actually been a Las Vegas showgirl before she found her wealthy husband sitting at a Blackjack table somewhere in Vegas.
Remodeling Tillie’s house was apparently some type of family project and the Vegas showgirl, her husband and their four kids would show up every Sunday to work on the house. Before long, Tillie’s cute little rock cottage had a huge, black awning over the front door that made it look like a funeral parlor. The next thing we knew they had planted little fir trees all along the side yard. We live in South Texas, so those fir trees were gasping for air when the temperature hit 85 in March, and by July they were little dehydrated specimens consisting of dead branches and brown leaves. They looked like Christmas trees on crack. It was just sad.
It became kind of a hobby for P and me to keep an eye on all the various ways they were desecrating Tillie’s house. Some days, P would call me on my cell phone and ask “Did they have the picnic table with the huge Coca-Cola umbrella up before you left the house this morning?” And I would gasp and say “Shut UP!” and he would say he wished he were kidding.
The best day was the day the former Vegas showgirl showed up wearing spandex bike shorts and a sports bra, pulled a chainsaw out of the back of her car, and proceeded to attempt to cut down a pecan tree that was at least three feet in diameter. P and I watched in fascinated horror as she wielded that chainsaw with all the skill and grace of a drunk monkey and held our breath as we noticed the tree beginning to lean precariously toward our other neighbor’s garage. It was the best free entertainment anyone could hope for on a Monday morning.
Our other favorite thing about these neighbors was that the dad was a real friendly sort of fellow and anytime we were out in our yard he would feel free to walk over and talk to us about how we needed to have another baby or that he noticed P drove a Ford truck and had he mentioned that he didn’t really like Ford trucks. He always looked sharp in his own pair of bike shorts (and nothing else) with his thick, gold chain draped elegantly around his sweaty neck. He also was constantly trying to lead us to Jesus by saying things like “Whoo! I’m out of breath from planting those fir trees and speaking of, you know the Bible says that man’s life is but a breath”.
One day I asked P if he thought we should just tell bike short dad that we were Christians so that he could save his efforts, but we agreed it was too entertaining to listen to all the ways he tried to witness to us. “I notice you only have one child, but you know the Lord says that blessed is the man whose quiver is full”. I thought blessed was the man who gets to sleep eight hours at night with no interruption and having only one child is helping me take a step in that direction.
About a year ago, this family sold the house to an older couple who informed us that their plan was to renovate the new renovation which thankfully, included removing the black awning from the front door. They said that they wanted to really downsize now that the kids were out of the house, and they just needed something small like say, 2500 square feet. Oh what a great idea! Hopefully the two of you will be able to live in something that is bigger than our entire house including our garage.
Anyway, last week I woke up and was sure that our entire neighborhood must be under siege. There were horrendously loud noises coming from somewhere nearby, the dogs were cowering under the table and the windows in our house were rattling as if they would break at any moment. I looked out the back door to see a dumpster being dropped in Tillie’s old backyard, jackhammers eliminating her old back porch, and a concrete truck pouring fresh concrete to make a foundation for something that by the size of the concrete slab will be anything but quaint.
Oh yes, we are now living in the construction zone.
This is the view from our back porch this morning.
It’s hard to pick my favorite blue accessory adorning the lot, but the bright blue port-a-potty is certainly the front runner. It warms my heart to know that construction workers are able to relieve themselves not even ten feet from my back porch.