paisleypiper's Diaryland Diary
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the little house
�Once upon a time there was a Little House� She was a pretty Little House and she was strong and well built. The man who built her so well said �This Little House shall never be sold for gold or silver and she will live to see our great-great-grandchildren�s great-great-grandchildren living in her.��
Last night was the neighborhood �vote� about the proposed expansion of Institution XXXX, otherwise known, to both Quinn and I, as The Institution.
The Institution is an ugly, ugly pink place. It blocks the one street that leads to our street. Sometimes, when we drive through their winding drive, we scoot down in our seats, drive really slow and weave a bit � to blend in with the drivers at The Institution, which is mean, but we still do it. Sometimes it feels good to drive through there in this manner because The Institution just plopped down in a blighted area and did our neighborhood a big favor. Such a big favor that it is darn difficult to find our house without directions. Such a big favor that they put up a fence to keep us from setting foot on their property or in their gardens. The Institution replaced us with statues of people in their garden � children turning cartwheels, a family having a picnic, two people walking. Their buildings are set back amid a sea of grass and we all take our dogs there, which is mean, but we still do it. There is an unspoken animosity there and no one in the neighborhood talks about it.
�More roads were made, and the countryside was divided into lots. More houses and bigger houses� apartment houses and tenement houses�schools�stores�and garages spread over the land and crowded around the Little House. No one wanted to live in her and take care of her any more. She couldn�t be sold for gold or silver, so she just stayed there and watched.�
We remember what happened when the development deal before The Institution fell through. Blocks and blocks of houses sat empty for a couple of years. Drug dealers, prostitution, vagrants, fires, crime. The SWAT team finally just took it over as a training ground because they were spending so much time there. And this went on just four blocks from the prized, renown part of the city where all of the tourists converge to shop, dine and wander around with maps.
We just finished a similar two-year situation with The Fancy Apartment Complex just to the north of The Institution. An entire five-block area empty with, this time, a serial killer added to the mix. We lost the short route to the grocery store. But we are all thinking positive/talking positive about The Complex because that area was blighted. And we knew it, but we really didn�t have any power. The northern half of our neighborhood was at one point historic, an old African-American community. We have a church from 1857 that just sits next to a Blockbuster Video and a Subway. That is old for our city. But The Hospital and The Institution got into our area plan, making this grand commitment to stay in the city while the entire city picked up and moved to the south and across the state line. An entire part of the real history of our city has been lost forever. And it is foolish greed because we could do far better with good plans and considering how to use existing structures.
I hear that Quinn and I are sitting on a gold mine. The value of the land underneath our house far exceeds the value of our house. But how can we trust that when people give us their opinion? And is that any reason to develop this important part of our city foolishly? There is a push for more density, which frankly, the city is unprepared to support on the infrastructure end and the population is unprepared to support from a residential end. I cannot imagine from where all of these people will come to move into our neighborhood at the rate and density to which it is being developed. This is not a field of dreams, it is an important part of the city, and not just because I live here.
Quinn and I bought our house here because we could afford it and because it was safer, both from a crime and a harassment standpoint, than our other options. Our block is about 30% gay and we wanted that. After being stalked in our former apartment, there was some appeal to settling where we would fit in and we knew it. I had always liked this block, having lived around the corner from it for a while. One day we were walking around and there was our house for sale. Quinn fell in love with our front door, immediately. As soon as she stood on our funny little porch and looked at the door, I knew�. The house is way too small for us, but we love it. It has no driveway and we just sort of pretend we have a shower, but we love it. Our little stone castle in the middle of the city.
And we have really fixed it up, too, all by ourselves. We�ve plumbed, wired, painted, scraped, painted, wired, plumbed. We�ve hammered and built and drilled. We�ve arranged and rearranged, trying to fit into the house. When I was child my favorite book was The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton-- not on the prairie, but the sweet story about the house that city grew around and then it got moved to the country. Will our little house get moved to the country? How does someone take down a limestone house? Would all of the rocks be turned into some wall? Would it be named after the man who built and built our house for his daughter?
Our neighborhood is so old and so poorly redeveloped that we still have a barn about a block away. At one time, it might have even belonged to our house because the stone work on the bottom half of the barn is unique and matches that of our house. The barn just sits there, right in a major urban, densely populated place. The barn sits there, surrounded by cheap apartment buildings. Five blocks north of Sax Fifth Avenue is a turn-of-the-century, stone and white barn. Barns are not bad things, it is just a bit odd. We all walk by it, but no one ever really talks about it. Because that is the real part of the charm of our neighborhood. It is truly eclectic.
Our neighborhood association was formed a couple decades ago, I think, so a group of scared seniors could complain about renters, crime and abandoned cars. Each year, they hold a joke of an election and elect themselves, over and over again. They frustrate people who really want to dig in and make a plan for change. They threaten us that the only way to support and care for a neighborhood is to go down to city hall and be a presence at all of the many daytime meetings. This excludes so many people who care.
Every time Quinn or I go to a neighborhood association meeting we need to drink after it is over and we wonder what we did. Every time Quinn or I talk with our actual neighbors, we end up having just a big love fest because we all like each other so much. Our neighborhood association is a strangle hold of a few people who mean to exclude the rest of us. They are foolish, selfish and arrogant. And about four years ago I became one of them in an attempt to change the culture from within, because I love this neighborhood. I love just walking down the street, no matter how crumbled and dangerous the sidewalks. I love cursing the sweetgum trees which drop these incredibly dangerous little prickly balls that are actually slippery underfoot. Once I was on a national arbor foundation website and they had a municipal special on sweetgums,� leave it to our city to get the very cheapest and put a whole bunch of them in our neighborhood.
I wanted to get into the group and wait for a few others to join me. So far, two other people have gotten in who are not part of this clique. And one day, sooner rather than later, we will be plotting to take over...
It is difficult for me, because apart from the association, Citizen Gerta, the president, is a good friend of mine. In the past we have agreed to disagree on matters of the neighborhood, but at this point, I don�t know if I can even do that. Because recently they have just gone too far, this small group of self-proclaimed leaders. They dared to give The Institution the impression that we had voted in favor of The Institution's expansion which would take our view of downtown out of the back of our house and replace it with a giant eight-foot structure with balconies. I will be watching, at best, someone water petunias instead of watching storms blow over the city, the deep mystery of the night sky, the quiet lights of skyscrapers in the distance.
So, a small group, who �officially� lost the vote last night, has turned into a larger group, and will be assembling at City Hall tomorrow. I wish I could go.
�Then one fine morning in Spring along came the great-great-granddaughter of the man who built the house so well. She saw the shabby Little House, but she didn�t hurry by. There was something about the Little House that made her stop and look again.�
I have learned from living in this little house that I don�t really need as much space as I think I do � the house is not that small, just smaller than most "houses� that are a bit newer than ours. Every time we think about moving, we get sad because we would give up the unique and attractive characteristics of our house. And mostly, I think we get sad because we would give up the little community�no matter how accidental�that we have found living in this tiny, crowded little neighborhood. And it is worth digging in to protect it, putting up a fight, doing what feels right and believing in that.
Quinn really wanted to write about the meeting, because she went to to cast her vote. So, if you want to read about the Nutritionists and the Beer Drinking Guy, check out Thistledown.
Excerpts from The Little House Story and pictures by Virginia Lee Burton. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1942.
10:49 p.m. - 2002-08-13
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