The Street - A Composite Sketch (29)

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-ninth part of the anatomy of The Street.

They were what might be termed elderly when they first moved into the house. Or perhaps they weren't as old as they appeared. Of old Anglo-Irish stock, he had retired just before they bought the house. They'd chosen one of the more modest models, a smaller two-story attached home, located near the bottom of the street. Although more modest than many of the other houses on the street, it was still a substantial size, and very attractive, but with a single garage, smaller lot, and hence less gardening space, suiting them perfectly well.

They were both quiet people, but quite friendly, if retiring in nature. Still, open to neighbourly contact when they were out and about. They had a peculiar habit, in nice weather or foul during the spring, summer and autumn, of sitting out on garden chairs, inside their garage, watching activities on the street. Perhaps they were accustomed to homes built in a much earlier era, when it was common to have a front porch where people spent their leisure time sitting out and being neighbourly from their porches.

Their children long departed, one in forest management to New Brunswick, the other, an architect, was working in Bahrain. For them, an impossibly exotic location, difficult for them to comprehend. Visits from New Brunswick were occasional and much anticipated, the only times they were able to see and treasure their three grandchildren. Other than their absent children, they had few relatives nearby. He had worked for Health Canada as an epidemiologist.

They attended to the house chores on their own. They appeared to have kept themselves in reasonably good physical shape, neither being overtly heavy, and capable enough. It was his custom to help his wife around the house, and one of the little chores he did was to carry the vacuum cleaner to its resting place when his wife was finished with it. On one occasion as he was doing this he slipped and fell, and smashed some glass bottles, cutting himself, seriously, on one of his legs.

An ambulance rushed him to hospital, and he remained there for a few days. His wife wasn't able to drive, so she was left at home without him until his return. She nursed him, but his health never returned. It was one thing after another; something about a clot in his leg being discovered, then a heart condition, and he lost full mobility. Neighbours took turns driving the couple to hospital for his appointments. It wasn't long before they decided they'd be better off in a retirement home.

Another childless couple bought the house. They had in common their heritage as Anglo-Canadians, but nothing more. He was a bandy-legged little rooster of a man with a questing eye for material prestige. His wife had an expressionless, unsmiling face, uninterested in investing much in the way of neighbourhood goodwill. It must have irked him that they could only afford an attached house. His head forever cocked to eye advantage, he would amble the street, surveying the neighbourhood for ideas, suggestions of how he might 'improve' his property.

He disdained neighbourhood discourse, hoping to gain by his emulation of others' designs, and going one better sans consultation. He was a postal carrier with a long work history of time off and sick days that his union contract guaranteed. He began mostly week-end (augmented by time off for sick days) home improvement projects, devoting himself to a brick walkway from garage to front door, elevated garden beds, the installing of a very nice front screen door. And a lot of work to landscape the lot advantageously.

He did an excellent job of whatever he undertook. And he was meticulous in looking after his property, taking great pride in the results of his work. He strutted about with satisfaction, surveying his property from one angle and then another, would trot up the street, then down, to determine how it must look to a stranger just passing by. Not that many strangers passed by that short and quite private street, for once off the main thoroughfare it only led, as it curved at the top, to an entirely different street.

Those things that he admired about other peoples' houses that he was able to construct on his own, for his house, he always did one better. There were often deliveries of construction materials for interior work, but no one knew what he did in the house, for none were invited within. He earned the sobriquet of "Little Cock of the Rock". Not entirely unkindly, since, despite his distant manner, he was admired for his initiative and his apparent hard work, and the pride he took in both his work and his property.

His wife was aloof, removed from it all; the strutting of her husband, and the puzzled interest of their neighbours. She was herself busy, working as a laboratory technician in a nearby clinic, adjacent a building on the main thoroughfare that housed medical professionals. She approved of everything her husband did to their home, and took her own pride in his abilities and determination to have their home present as worthwhile as any others on the street.

For some reason, no one quite knew, they decided they would move on. He had most certainly improved the property, and perhaps having done so, he wanted another that he could try his hand at. There is a 'for sale' sign up in front of the house. No one doubts he will experience any trouble selling the house, and making a tidy profit. It's doubtful anyone will miss them. Rather, an air of expectation hangs on who will be the third inhabitants of the house.