October 30, 2006
Raze
The humorist Dave Barry wrote that as SUVs get larger, cell phones get smaller. He reported that eventually we’ll not be satisfied with only a Suburban, but will need a Subdivision, and that the phones will be the size of Chiclets.
And so with the new houses in our neighborhood. The lot-scrapers (aka razers) are hard at work and with apparent disregard for the roads gaining them access to their derring-do. A pert little bungalow down the street from us has now been replaced by a three-story brick behemoth that looms like the proverbial 800-lb gorilla at the front door. It’s listed on the market now for ten times more than the house it replaced. There’s another, even larger one underway next door. The entrepreneurs say it’s “the dirt” they want, that it’s “location-location-location” that really matters. The problem left for the neighbors now is how one goes about getting home on a street that was barely wide enough to begin with for two reasonably-sized cars to pass or park. The city planners just shrug their shoulders. The roads and streets maintainers don’t even try to count the potholes.
And that’s not all. There are some mighty handsome and enduring trees in our vicinage (thanks, Roget) that have been sacrificed to make way for these residential leviathans. How easily we forget that they and all their kin are serious 24/7 stewards of our environment — and of our respiratory systems — and that they truly belong to nobody but God. Where are Adam and Eve when we need them most?