The Street - A Composite Sketch (23)

Not a very long street, just off a major arterial, it is shaped like a question mark. At the conclusion of the bulge it meanders into another street. One half of the street backs onto a heavily wooded ravine, a neighbourhood treasure, though few of the street's residents quite recognize its value, nor make use of its propinquity. It cleanses the air everyone breathes, it hosts birds and wildlife and presents a treasury of wildflowers throughout the seasons. At one time the street, part of a larger suburban community, shared a small-town address. It has long since been subsumed into the greater national capital of the country, through a wide-ranging amalgamation of communities and even farms. The street and the houses on it were built two and a half decades ago. The domiciles are comprised mostly of single-family, detached dwellings, with a handful of semis verging on the main thoroughfare. Many of the residents are the original home purchasers. They would comprise roughly 50% of the residents of the street. The semis appear to have changed hands far more often than the detached homes. And those homes that have been re-sold have often enjoyed a succession of owners. The original home owners who moved into their houses when their children were small have mostly bid farewell to now-grown children. The street represents an amalgam of family types, and there is a significant percentage at this time, of retired people, singly and in couples who, though their houses are meant for family occupation, still opt to remain in their too-large, but comfortable and familiar and valued homes. It is a very quiet street, with little traffic other than those who live there. The house fronts are diverse, and attractive. Most residents take care of their homes, seeing them as their primary investments. Furnaces have been replaced, and air conditioners, and also windows. Kitchens and bathrooms have been remodelled, and people have added decks and occasionally airy 'summer houses' to the backs of their homes. One-third of the homes boast swimming pools, in-ground and above-ground. Most people take pride in their properties, and feel they must achieve lawns that are weedless and smoothly green. Some painstakingly remove weeds by hand in the spring, others hire lawn-care companies to spread chemicals on their lawns. Invariably, the people who look after their own gardens and lawns have superior gardens and lawns. Each house has a large tree planted in front; maples, ash,crabapples, spruce or pine, fully mature. This is a community that is truly mixed, representing people from around the world, come to Canada as immigrants, settled and making the most of opportunities open to all its citizens in a free and open society noted for its pluralism and dedication to fair representation. There are the extroverts and the introverts, those who prefer not to mingle, others who do. They are herewith loosely sketched:

This is the Twenty-third part of the anatomy of The Street.

One supposes it doesn't say much for the neighbourly effect the original owners of the house had on those who lived on the street. Taking little notice of their neighbours, their neighbours returned the compliment, taking scant notice of them. Their comings-and-goings were uninteresting, mere glimpses caught of the pair as they went about their business, definitely excluding the interest of onlookers, stiffly keeping their privacy intact from public view.

Although there is much to be said for friendly relations between neighbours, everyone has the right to comport themselves as they wish, and if their wish is to erect a barrier between themselves and others who live close by, then that is their choice, to be respected. If not respected, then at the very least noted. After all, people have a right to their privacy, and there are far too many instances of neighbours behaving badly toward one another; disinterest is no vice, merely indicative of a wish to avoid social contact.

When they did move out of their house after a relatively short stay of five years, it was rumoured that the house had been a temporary investment, that they made money from the sale, planning to move 'up' from what the neighbourhood and the houses on it represented. Taking their place was a young family, husband in the trades, a house painter with no lack of contracts on construction sites, and his wife a hairdresser. With two very young children, a boy and a younger girl.

Immediately on moving into this relatively new house, the two set about making changes of note. The double garage, for one thing, was drywalled, a ceramic floor laid in it, cupboards built along the walls, and a number of pedestal sinks installed. Clearly, the hairdresser meant to pursue her craft at her home, on the street. But it never happened; they must have discovered that it was illegal and weren't able to get the appropriate business license.

One might have thought they'd have checked first, done their due diligence, but she said that they hadn't encountered municipal opposition in their previous home, not all that far from this street. Perhaps some neighbour on this street intervened, contacted authorities to prevent anyone from undertaking commercial business on a residential street. It took a while before the garage was used in a conventional manner, to park their cars.

His being in the building trades meant that he could call in his peers in the industry and have things done in the house at a substantial cost-reduction. He had the driveway replaced with a truly durable, concrete one, the envy of the street. They put in an above-ground pool and had a very large poolhouse, garden-shed combination built for them. They changed the flooring in their new house, and had the master bathroom re-built, the kitchen cupboards changed and granite countertops installed.

People on the street were agape at the constant stream of construction crews coming in to complete one job after another. And wondered where a house painter would get the funding to do all these things to a newly-acquired house that he also replaced the roof on, because he didn't care for its colour. And they also had their front lawn nicely landscaped, inclusive of a bricked frontyard patio.

Their two children were slightly older than the two that lived directly beside them, but they got on quite well together. Also with the brood of little girls living directly across from them.
The little girl also became friendly with the small girl whose grandparents across the street, several houses removed, looked after her during the day. The street became more lively with their rambunctious play.

The parents were quiet people, despite their flamboyant streak demonstrated by their frenzied home renovations. They adopted a lovable, tiny dog which, in high spirits, would run about the near neighbourhood to the distress of others hoping it would never be run over. And it wasn't. The tiny dog was a whirling dervish of unrestrained energy, with a wild ambition to be an acrobat of note. Its antics were noted and greatly amused the neighbours.

The children were both unfailingly polite. The little girl much like her mother, slight, and pretty with light brown hair and a wide, quick smile. The boy, older, did manage from time to time to get into some trouble, particularly when he decided to hang around with a boy several years older than he, living across the street, with a sole parent, a father busily attempting to raise two boys and two girls on his own.

They live there still, quietly, the children growing older, preparing to move now beyond their teen years into a broader maturity. Their mother still looks fresh and young and pretty, their father still has his brusque manner intact. They never have made much of a social impact on the street, despite their initial and ongoing busyness in enhancing their property. It was rumoured in the neighbourhood that they have been quietly attempting to sell their house.

No signage has ever gone up to alert the neighbourhood that the house would be sold again. It seems that real estate agents have informed that that it would be quite difficult for them to recoup their investment in the house substantially beyond what they had originally paid, to compensate for all the improvements and updates they committed to, in the space of the years. So it seems they have decided to stay.

For the time being, in any event. Their presence has been good for the street, despite their never quite having seemed sufficiently relaxed in their presence there. But nor has their presence ever been anything but quietly companionable to their neighbours, however socially distanced.

c. 2009 Rita Rosenfeld