Progress, at What Cost?

As I was driving to Target yesterday, I passed a house that I always pass, but something was different. Along the road, at the corners of the property and next to the driveway, were tall wooden posts, the first signs of a fence that is being installed.

The fence made me sad. In a matter or days or weeks, depending on whether they are hiring someone or doing it themselves, that house and its surrounding yard will no longer be visible from the road.

I love to look at that house. It looks a bit like an out-in-the-country home, only new neighborhoods are encroaching on its isolated location. The house itself has some years on it. It has a front porch and is in need of a fresh coat of paint. I can picture a couple of cane-backed rocking chairs out there, but honestly, I have never noticed if they have rocking chairs. I may have missed my chance for clarification.

It’s not the house itself that draws my attention. It’s that magnificent yard. So much is happening out there. In one corner is an old RV, which may possibly be a room addition of sorts. There is a shed in the other corner, and in between, lots of things clutter the yard. There’s a crudely penned area on one side of the house, and in the back, what I think might be an above-ground pool.  Clothes lines, old bikes, a short windmill, mostly a bunch of junk, really, but not a bonafide junk yard. It’s the kind of yard that demands you pay attention, which so much to see, but no real sense of order. It would be fine in the country, which it used to be, but now, it looks a bit like an eyesore, probably more to the neighbors than to me. I find it fascinating.

The real reason I love the house is that I never know what animal I’m going to see in the front yard. I’m not talking dogs or cats or even a rogue chicken.

In the past, I used to see a mostly white swayback horse with a little age on it. It would mill about in front of the house, grazing on blades of grass that sprouted at random through patches of dirt. The horse had no lead, no supervision, and no fence. It would just stand in the yard and chew. I never saw it out in the road. That horse knew its boundaries.

I have driven by that house on and off for at least a decade. At first, I saw the horse almost every time, and then less and less, until finally, no more horse. Even though I never saw it, I still looked for it every time. Like the house itself, the horse had some years on it, and I figured nature took its course.

And then one day, I saw a pair of Sicilian donkeys. Regular donkeys are just sort of heehaw ho hum, but Sicilian donkeys? Holy hell, I want a dozen of them. They too hung out in the front yard, minding their own donkey business, doing their donkey thing. I took more trips to Target than a family of four warranted, in case I could catch a glimpse of those beautiful taupe mini donkey-donks just chilling in the yard.

Cute AF, am I right?

 

Then one day, there were three! A baby had been born, perhaps in a manger, and it was the cutest thing I had ever seen. The homeowners seemed more protective of the wee donkey, and at some point a makeshift corral was built to contain the family of three. I would slow down whenever I had occasion to drive by, grinning like a fool the whole time if I was lucky enough to spy them.

The donkeys, unfortunately, are no longer residents of the yard. I am convinced they were forced to give them away, because no one in their right mind would willingly part with a family unit of Sicilian donkeys.

And now, the tell-tale signs of a fence have been erected. I will be denied of my chance to eyeball the yard, looking for animals that seem so out of place on the way to Target. So yes, I am a little sad, because progress means more development, and development means country houses are no longer isolated, and maybe having a horse in the front yard is not the sort of thing that should be happening. Going forward, every time I pass that fenced-in house, I will reflect back to the good old days, when the country was the country, and donkeys and horses roamed freely in front yards.

In the Off Season

Last week, we celebrated Christmas in July, on July 25, to be exact. Yes, it’s the middle of summer, and to be fair, we are Jewish, but hear me out. I had my reasons, and they were all pretty good as far as I am concerned.

For starters, it’s hot, ungodly hot, the kind of heat that makes domestic abuse and other violent crimes increase. It is so hot you literally want to beat or murder another human, as if you needed another reason.

Also, it’s six months from Christmas. That’s a long time to wait for holiday fun. Think about it, other than summer vacations, what does the summer have going for it in the way of celebrations? Fireworks and red, white, and blue clothing? Hot dogs and hamburgers cooked on a grill? Watermelon seed spitting and competitive eating? None of those hold a cinnamon-scented candle to the winter holidays. There’s no gift exchange, no special decorations, not even any themed movies. And forget about Hanukkah in July. That has literally no ring to it. Plus, there is no way I am stinking up the whole house with the smell of fried potatoes.

Which brings me to the real reason we celebrated Christmas in July.  Have you seen Krampus, a movie loosely based on a German folktale about the darker side of Christmas? Krampus is a sort of half goat, half demon creature that punishes the bad boys and girls who don’t deserve Santa’s good graces, and seems to have that dark side we have come to expect from German traditions. The movie premiered last holiday season, but we did not get a chance to catch it at the theaters, and now it’s available on Redbox. It seemed wrong somehow to watch a holiday movie in the middle of summer….but if you make it a special occasion, well, you get Christmas in July.

I am known as one who likes to run with a theme. I sat down and came up with a whole menu and everything. Originally, it was going to be turkey sandwiches with cranberry mayo and decorated sugar cookies, but S, my daughter, didn’t like the idea of mayo on her sandwich, and I can barely stomach the mess of decorated cookies at Christmastime. We switched to roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, green beans, rolls, and frozen hot chocolate, most of which could be purchased from an upscale fancy grocery store and reheated at home. Score!

The day of the festivities arrived. I was working on an article about ways to keep cool during the heat of summer, which is one of the more interesting topics I’ve had from my freelance web content job, and I learned a few ideas during my research. Some of the weirder tips included spritzing your sheets with cool water before you slip into bed, which is a great way to get a head start on your night sweats, and putting a fan behind a big bowl of ice like it’s 1916. One of the other things I read suggested reversing your ceiling fans to run counter clockwise in order to push the cold air down.

I mentioned the fan trick to my husband while my daughter, S, and I sat on the couch, trying to keep cool and save energy by not moving any parts of our bodies. He said that went against logic and engineering, but if I read it on the Internet, it must be true, so we could give it a try. He reversed the direction on the fan. It slowed down, stopped, and then began turning in the opposite direction. My husband stood directly below it with his hand stretched in the air, trying to see if he could feel the cooler air.

And then, just like that, it started to snow.

Gentle puffs of built-up dust and cat hair floated down and settled on the coffee table, the sofa, even on S and me. The dust and funk of that ceiling fan that no one can reach blew softly around us like fat gray flakes before blanketing every surface underneath it.

“Look, snow! It’s snowing for Christmas in July!” I exclaimed.

“That’s disgusting, and it’s getting all over me,” S said.

“When was the last time you cleaned this fan?” my husband asked.

S sneezed, and my husband returned the fan to its normal clockwise setting. I got up and vacuumed all the snow dust.

“Gee, cold air,” he said, and walked into the other room to play the Centipede arcade game that he bought the family two Christmases ago.

Later, we listened to Bing Crosby crooning familiar carols while we ate our lukewarm mashed potatoes and rotisserie chicken. Even upscale fancy grocery stores ignore turkey in the summer months. After we cleaned up and made the frozen hot chocolate, we settled under blankets upstairs to watch Krampus, and for a moment, we forgot all about the summer heat.