He had moved from the Mission District of San Francisco,
an urban barrio, to Sycamore, a pleasant suburban town
with tree-lined streets. His mother had gotten tired of yanking
open her drapes to see run-down Chevys and fender-buckled
Ford Torinos bleeding black oil. Tired of the ghetto blasters
shouldered by shirtless vatos. Tired of jackhammers cutting
up the street in the morning. Tired of the Number 43 bus leaving
shreds of black smoke hovering in the city air. It was time to
get out, she said one day when she came home from work and
found her planter box tipped over, her snapdragons stomped,
and her small Victorian flat ransacked. The window screen was
slashed, and the TV and stereo were gone. Left in their place were
a couple of crushed beer cans and cigarette butts.
Sharply manicured lawns and rigidly trimmed hedges. That’s the
view from my front stoop. Then there’s my sorry front lawn.
Sigh. Riddled with Bermuda Grass that goes dormant in the
Winter, my “lawn” is just now starting to pretend to be green.
Sure, the patch at the top of the gentle, sloping berm of a hill
is green, but it also isn’t technically grass. Is clover grass?The narrow concrete walkway that runs to my front door is buckled
in the middle by the invasive top root of the untamed weeping
willow growing in the far left of my front yard. Moving your gaze
to the right, the immature liquid ambers, growing taller each year,
are spaced evenly apart.Does the house or home make the
neighborhood?
indolent . . intimidated