The Street - A Composite Sketch (6)

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 sixth part of the anatomy of The Street.

They were one of the first families to move into their new house on the-then new street. The area wasn't at all new to them, only the new conformation. It had all previously been farmland, and they had grown up in the area. In fact, for him, it was uniquely familiar; as a child he had lived in a farmhouse close enough to the ravine to spend time down there, playing about. He remembered the creek as it once was, not as it now appears. With heavy rains it would become swollen enough to resemble a lake.

The rural residents would even boat in it, and catch fish. The farmers had built crude bridges to reach from one height to the other, crossing the ridges in the ravine, quite unlike the later bridges built by the municipality that merely crossed the creek in its current state, low down in the ravine. Building all those sewers made a huge difference; meant to deal with storm surges to protect the low-lying areas that were recently built into housing tracts. The current residents beneficiaries of the process.

Even so, in some areas, but not on this particular street, there have been storm sewer back-ups, even flooded streets, and residents have not been at all pleased, nor have their insurance companies been particularly impressed. He had his own insurance agency, in fact, on the main street of the now-incorporated town, and his wife worked in the office. They had two children, a young man, and his older sister. She was married, had her own home, visited occasionally with their grandchild.

Only the son lived at home with his parents. Like his father, he was mad for golf. A francophone family, they were friendly with everyone on the street, as befits people in the insurance industry. Many of his neighbours signed on to him for their home and car insurance, and the family was well liked and respected. In fact, one early spring the area had experienced an amazing hailstorm, with huge pieces of frozen ice hitting rooftops, scraping the particulate matter off, damaging roofs.

By then the homes were about ten years old. The hail had damaged trees and shrubs, and lay in huge heaps on the lawns. It took a day or two before it all melted finally. It was one of those once-in-a-lifetime weather phenomenons. On the street behind, one person contacted his insurance agency - just happened to be this man, and he pulled strings with the insurer to have that roof replaced. News spread and a feverish activity of insurance-paid roof replacements ensued.

Those residents who had other insurers and other agencies representing them were out of luck. The insurance companies sent along, on request, specialists who climbed up and inspected the roofs, declared them to have been largely unaffected by the hailstorm, and their roofs were not replaced. Our man was more popular than ever; his exploits with serving his clients and the saga of the roof replacements become popular neighbourhood lore.

The family had a specially built car ordered for their son, and he rode a bicycle that had been retrofitted for him. He too was friendly, like his parents, and cheerful, although his eyes longingly followed young female forms and one felt pity for him. He was dwarf-sized, runty-legged, his arms resembling flippers, a Thalidomide child. Despite which, he was eminently successful as an insurance salesman.

His golf game was another story, but people were undemanding of him as a physical presence. It was his personality, his blithe outward cheerfulness that they responded to, and respected him for. And then, after living in their home for well over a decade, they decided to move. The house was a quick sale. They were missed, but people are accustomed to others moving on in the kind of peripetatic society we live in.

The family that moved in represented another mixed marriage, in several ways. A December-April pairing. An obviously older man, anglophone, paired with a young and pretty francophone, and their two young boys. He was a departmental manager with the federal government. She was outgoing, he reserved, and the boys held themselves apart from the other children their age on the street.

They had a constant stream of visitors to their home throughout the years; mostly other family members and their children, giving their boys ample opportunity to feel part of an extended family. They attended French-language school, and although they had friends at school, it was seldom that one saw other boys visiting, from the neighbourhood. They live quite close to the ravine entrance, and the boys, now 10 and 12, sometimes venture there.

They go there, occasionally with a friend, more often by themselves, to play military games, taking their rifle-sized water guns with them. Running excitedly from tree to tree, trying to duck one another's sight. Another few years perhaps, and they will have graduated to paint-ball guns, like some of the other boys in the area, plopping coloured balls of paint onto trees, leaving them on the trails for people to wonder at, and pets to step on.

Last time they were in the ravine, after a series of rainfalls that left everything sodden, and the clay base of the creek roiled and mucky, they decided to ignore the bridge and slop into the creek itself, sliding over to the other side. They had a wonderful time, slipping, slithering in the clay, falling and laughing themselves silly, the area resounding with their joyful shouts. When they finally returned home their mother was not pleased.

As punishment they were not permitted entry to their house. They were actually completely covered in a slick of fast-drying clay. Thick enough so that when it dried they felt their skin tightening up appreciably, and thought even their arms and legs seemed less flexible; wondered if they were about to become clay men. Wondered when their mother would get over being angry and let them into the house, to wash up.

What better place could there possibly be for a young family to live than on that street, offering all manner of lifestyle potentials, the proximity to the ravine reminding people of nature, the green living things cleansing the air they all breathed, the antics young boys resort to, a wonderful learning experience....