Last year, our town’s department of roads chose our potholed street as the one most in need of repair out of all the byways in our little community. Back in September, those of us who live on this special block received notices that work would begin soon so we all started parking on adjacent blocks. Weeks went by, then months. Apparently, unplanned for by town planning was WINTER with all its storms and snow, so in April the same notice appeared in our mailboxes. April. It is now Memorial Day. For the past week, this chick magnet has been parked in front of our house, which is no problem since we haven’t parked there in months.
Attractive, no? Of course, it’s not like the front of our house isn’t already sullied with evidence of man’s disregard for his fellow man. After nearly being mowed down in my own driveway by SUVs pulling in full speed to reverse direction so they can drop kids at the elementary school across the street, I was forced to post the following fetching sign on our lamp post.
And good money I paid for it, too. It’s been worth it, though, in entertainment value alone. More often than you’d imagine, a drowsy or distracted parent behind the wheel will forget we don’t want them in our driveway and start to pull in and then slam on the brakes and stop just INCHES from the sign. There are few things more amusing at 8:00 am than watching an Explorer try to do a three-point turn in the street with all the other SUVs vying for ground space. It looks like Top Gun. And then when the car door finally opens, ONE little first-grader pops out. It’s like carting a chihuahua around in an RV.
By far the saddest thing is that this neighborhood was modeled after Radburn, the planned community designed in 1929 by Clarence Stein and Henry Wright as “a town for the motor age.” The idea was to create a community where pedestrians could walk anywhere in the neighborhood without crossing a busy thoroughfare or being interfered with by automobiles. Our community was constructed on that model in the years following WWII when families had one car, not one car per family member. The beauty of the Radburn design is that all the streets are connected and the whole neighborhood is made to travel by foot. Sometime between 1955 and now people decided they need to drive four blocks to the school instead of walking. Or more drastically, perhaps encourage their kids to all walk the four blocks together. What? That’s crazy talk
Daughter’s Fotos are from the Cayce Zavaglia exhibit at Lyons Wier Gallery
embroidered hands
beaded
embroidered city
city stitches