I hate cities

I called my parents this week to learn that someone had been killed one door down, right next to my son’s house. A passerby saw the guy lying in the doorway about 11 am in a pool of blood and called police. According to the police he had been there a couple hours. No one had noticed. This is in the city I grew up in, a neighborhood where it used to be safe and now isn’t very safe. I doubt I could ever get my parents to move, and my son lives right next door, in my grandfather’s old house. They didn’t know the dead guy- he and another guy had just recently moved in, but they said there seemed to be a lot of drinking and loud fights. It is amazing to me that he could lay there for two hours in broad daylight only about 30 feet from the road, which is busy, and no one notice.

In the city everyone adverts their eyes and tries not to see things. And when some of them do see things they pretend they don’t so they don’t have to get involved. Had that happened on my less than busy country road, that close to the road where it could be seen plainly, I doubt he would have been there 2 hours before someone stopped to help. Not just call 911- actually help or try to.

There are at least two houses on Mom’s street where drugs are sold and everyone knows it. My son had a Tom Tom Navigator thing stolen out of his locked work van while it was parked right up against my Mom and Dads house- they share the driveway. He says it was probably someone who needed money for drugs, like that excuses it. He's learned not to take it personal he said. Someone stole his tackle box out of his personal van and left the contents strewn all over the street. A neighbor walking the dog found it and thought it might be his stuff so he got that back. Someone even jumped over the back fence and stole a bag of pop bottles while they were in the process of cleaning up after a fourth of July party. Now that’s pathetic.

I have fond memories of that street. It was once the edge of town, where my grandfathers raised chickens and rabbits and there were acres of empty land to play on. Now I hate going there. It’s about a half mile from where they built one of those mega malls and traffic is terrible. The roads are rougher than our dirt road, full of pot holes, and that’s not an exaggeration. They don’t plow their side street in the winter any more- our road gets plowed in a few days.

Despite the fact that my son got a ticket for parking on his own lawn overnight, there is junk everywhere. The houses are old and small and except for a few old timers like my parents still hanging in there, they are mostly cheap rental units now. My parents and my son keep a neat yard with gardens and a couple of the older neighbors also, but the rest of the street looks like a ghetto. It’s a poor neighborhood now, in a poor city, [ poor financially and poorly run, that is the hub of a very rich county

I think when my parents are gone my son will also move. I don’t know what his rent arrangements are exactly but I know that the houses will probably need to be sold. If they aren’t gone before them, I am sure the other older neighbors will move out soon after my parents are gone. Then I won’t need to visit the street and see the ruin. With any luck I won’t need to even visit the city again.

I hate the smell of it as we drive into it. I hate the noise and congestion. My grandparents would never have lived in these conditions. My dad says he will live in the house he built until he dies. He will keep grandpas house too, I’m sure. My mother did sell her moms house, which was on the other side of Mom and Dads and the people who bought it turned it into an ugly two story with a bare yard and two mean dogs. It doesn’t resemble the pretty small home my grandmother had with its elaborate gardens.

One of my sisters still lives in the city too. Her neighborhood is just as bad. The rest of us had sense enough to get out. I hope and pray I never have to move back into one of these ugly cities.