America Subdivided

I live in suburbia. Around here, people hold their little half acre piece of the promised land very dear. They tend it with an almost maniacal zeal. And they expect others to do so as well. Why? Because they worship at the altar of property values in the church of HOA, where they preach the gospel of compliance.

• Thou shalt not paint thy house any color but taupe.


• Thou shalt not allow thy grass to exceed 3" in length.


• Thou shalt not make thy property unique and interesting.


• Thou shalt consult the HOA on all matters pertaining to any dwelling or property contained under the auspices of said HOA.


• Thou shalt not, under any circumstances, undertake that which could result in lower property values for thy neighbor.

To be fair, I do realize that HOA's serve a purpose; and one for which I am grateful. We bought an older home in an established neighborhood when this area was not terribly desirable. An explosion of growth here has resulted in our neighborhood being one of the lower priced in area which is becoming almost exclusively populated by McMansions in the 400k to 700K range. An area that was once considered "the middle of nowhere" is now very trendy. All that, along with the fact that we have some of the best schools in the county, has caused an influx of lower income families to our neighborhood.

This is not a bad thing. And the increased diversity in a formerly homogenous enclave has been pleasing.

But. You also get a lot of flakes and losers that way. And we have.

You know the kind of folks I'm talking about...

They usually have three or four vehicles, only one of which is running at any given time. None of them is the same color all over. It appears that their definition of "landscaping" is relying on the dogs that are kept chained in the yard to discourage any from grass from growing, which eliminates the need for mowing. There seems to be a proliferation of household appliances, which results in the surplus being stored on the front porch. They believe that rebel flags make mighty fine window dressing. And there is still a sizeable scorch mark on the back deck from last year's deep fried Turkey fiasco.

Obviously, I'm grateful that our HOA has a number of commandments standards in place to prevent that kind of thing.

But I don't particularly care if the guy next door wants to paint his front door chartreuse. I don't particularly care if the lady accross the street wants 27 flamingos and a gazing ball on her front lawn. I don't particularly care if the young gal down the street wants to hang cloth diapers on a clothesline. I don't care if someone wants to build a pergola or put in a koi pond and I don't even really care if there is a washing machine on somebody's front porch, as long as it's only one.

America has lost it's character to Homeowner's Associations and subdivided sameness. We've lost a sense of community in these little rabbit warrens of cul-de-sacs and bends and chases. We've been cut off from one another and from the establishments that tie a community together; The Post Office, The Corner Store, The Coffee Shop....we've allowed ourselves to be impressed into a solitary existence by a precept which still mystifies me - Subdivided living. I don't know how or where this idea gained support, but it seems like a perfectly utilitarian and hygienic way of living, which, perhaps, was the point.

But I long for the color and character of the neighborhood in which I grew up. Sure, occasionally, a screwball neighbor would paint his house turquoise. And sometimes the neighborhood eccentric had a few too many lawn ornaments. And maybe a harried young mother would leave her laundry on the line for days on end. So what? People get a sense of one another from those things. They begin to know one another in way that can't be communicated through variegated shades of taupe and pre-approved varieties of heliotrope.

There was a sense of community then and there that is increasingly rare. People walked places. People talked over back fences. People encountered one another as they went about their lives. They nodded and smiled and knew the mailman, the grocer, the librarian by name. It's a way of life that is quickly disappearing in the pursuit of a sanitized American Dream.

Strangely, what prompted my thoughts on this issue, was the fistfight that almost occurred between two neighbors yesterday. One neighbor was blowing leaves into the yard of another. The leaf blowing neighbor tends to his property with a zeal that borders on obsesssive. He blew leaves for seven hours yesterday (Dude...ever hear of a rake??). The other party is not quite so tidy, and in fact often lets his yard get pretty bedraggled before taking matters in hand. This of course, infuriates the leaf blowing neighbor. I have no doubt that the leaf blowing was an act of retaliation. And understandably, this irritated the blowee to no end, especially since he had hired a lawn crew just a few days prior to come out and spruce things up. They argued, and only the intervention of the blowee's elderly father prevented things from getting physical.

What has it come to when grown men will come to blows over a few leaves?

Let's bring back neighborhoods. Let's act like neighbors again.

I'm biding my time here in suburbia and towing the HOA line. That neighborhood I grew up in? It's still there. And amazingly, it's still very much the same. And just as soon as I can, I'm taking my kids there to learn what the word "neighbor" really means.