The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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My neighbors in the suburb across the road have a Homeowners Association. Which is a simpler way of saying they have created a set of complicated bylaws that promote factions between themselves to fight for – or against – additional dues on tree cutting – or growing if they’re over 17 feet tall – water restrictions, weed control, building requirements, paint color schemes, roof materials, on street parking restrictions, beach trail maintenance, bulkhead repairs and nationality of their prospective spouses. In essence, they’ve manufactured the potential for their own small civil war.

Of course if they didn’t have covenants, bylaws, rules and regs, board meetings and various committees, I’m sure by now anarchy would rule, neighbors would be shot, trees would block views of the Sound and the Olympics, vacant lots would grow weeds and abandoned lawnmowers, windows would be boarded over, some houses would sport fuchsia paintjobs and the whole she-bang would look like our very own Kabul.

Welcome to the South End! Welcome to my neighborhood! When the turnip truck I rode in on dropped me off back in ’77, the ‘hood was a cut over woods across the road. For 40 years house after house got built, one or so a year, folks came and then left, the politics shifted, money rolled in, new owners remodeled, outbuildings were added, the well was updated, the bulkhead was replaced, the wealthy outnumbered the less wealthy, and, of course, dividing lines shifted accordingly. Welcome to America!

Lately there’s a new disruption in the Force. The Big Storm of ’21 knocked multiple trees on the current bulkhead built decades ago and knocked a 30 foot section out into the wind and waves which promptly tore the logs away. Replacement had already been on the table, some folks arguing against it, some for, some wanting to wait, some wanting immediate action. The Storm left a gaping hole in all those plans as well as in the bluff behind the breach. Think of a hornet’s nest slapped with a big stick. Think of million dollar houses sticking off the bluff. Think of refugees pouring in from across the road to our side, tent encampments, razor wire, U.N. aid, cholera, a community gone mad. Welcome to the World!

All I can hope for now is me and the mizzus become the new waterfront. Good luck, I guess, to the old neighbors. They may have to relocate to some other island with less stringent covenants.

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