December 8, 2021
I’m here to tell you that not
all change is bad.
We live in a quiet
neighborhood, with streets and cross-streets, made up of single-family
dwellings with various types of front yards, and back ones, too. Our
neighborhood is resplendent with mature trees of various genus. There is a
sidewalk in front of our house. It used to be a straight and short journey to
it, out the front door, three steps across the porch and then straight down the
five concrete stairs to the sidewalk.
A few years ago, the town
wanted to repair our sidewalk and wanted to know why we put our steps
down from our porch onto their sidewalk. The engineer working for the
town with whom we spoke seemed to suffer a disconnect; we explained that when
we purchased this house in 1993, those steps had already been there, and we
hadn’t even thought about the fact that they rested on a part of the sidewalk.
He kept insisting that couldn’t be so because the blueprints he had on file
didn’t show them.
This house is more than a
century old, and only God knows how long those old concrete steps had been
there.
The long and the short of the back-and-forth
discussions with the town was that we had to remove the steps. But the
gentleman proved not to be a total dork, because he suggested that the town
crew working on the sidewalk down the street and scheduled to do the repairs in
front of our house would likely remove our concrete steps for us in return for the
donation of a case of beer.
David took a stroll down the
street, and the bargain was struck. As it happened, we had to go out that
evening, so we dropped the case off to them, and headed out, stairs mostly
intact. I say mostly, because David and our son both had tried a jackhammer as
well as a sledgehammer, on that behemoth of a staircase, all to no avail. The
town’s crew were several and they had machinery at their disposal.
When we returned from our
evening out, those steps were gone, as was all the associated debris. The
neighbors thanked us for the evening’s entertainment. They sat out and watched
those four burly men and their mighty machines struggle and struggle and then finally
succeed where we could not.
All through the time we’ve lived
here in this house, one thing has remained a constant: on the 16th
of the month and on the 1st of the month, we have had to move our
car from parking on one side of the street, to the other.
That is, until this past Monday.
I did wonder some when I was
working yesterday, because I have just enough of my window available to me to
get a gist of what is happening outside in front of the house. And yesterday, I
watched David go down the new porch steps he and daughter built this summer to
replace the old new steps he and son had made after the crew demolished and
then hauled away the remnants of the concrete ones.
David walked across the street,
and then seemed to be looking at the parking sign beside my car. Then he looked
up and down the street. He was clearly confused about something, but I had no
idea what. Then he returned to the house, but rather than retake his seat on
the porch again with the dogs, he came inside the house, and to my office.
“I think you have to move the
car,” he said. “There’s a no parking sign there.”
I blinked. It was only the 6th
of the month. Now I was confused. “You mean, no parking 16th to 31st.”
“No, I mean no parking,
period. And it is the only parking sign there is on either side on the entire
street.”
I texted my daughter, who’d
gone out to the store and was due to return shortly, to let her know she needed
to park on the house side of the street when she returned. And then, because I
am just a tad anal, I called the town offices.
And I learned that because the
snow plowing crew had been complaining for years how difficult it is to remove
snow when cars are parked on either one side or the other depending on the day
of month, a change had been mandated. Beginning when the signs go up, and going
forward, we will only park our cars on one side of this street.
I will tell you that likely
this sign was installed before Sunday last—the day I went to get groceries and
then returned my vehicle to its spot right beside the parking sign that was now
a “no parking” sign. I’ll tell all of you, but I am not mentioning to my family
the fact that I never even looked at the sign or noticed the change.
Right now, though, I feel as
if I have been given an unexpected Christmas gift. I will no longer have to
trudge out on a cold or rainy day just to move the darn car from one side of
the street to the other. And from now own, I won’t have to idle and wait for
the groceries to be unloaded, either, because I then have to park on the other
side when that chore is done. Nope, from now on my car will always be parked on
our side of the street.
Yes, indeed. Merry Christmas
to me.
Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
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