Argh! Started to write this and then discovered I was typing away in the middle of y’day’s post. Trying again…
Sunday morning
8 a.m.
Temp: 92 degrees
Humidity: 28%
Predicted high: 108 degrees
Just back from the daily junket around the park. I’m soaked. Ruby just drank half a (large!!) bowl of water. Fluffy white clouds still float abcove, though not as colorfully as y’day’s.
Oh, well. The sticky weather does cut down, at least a bit, on the Dog Parade over at the park. Only counted six dogs over there, none of them off-lead (for a change).
Trudged past the (still vacant, still wrecked) home of the neighbors whose son got in trouble with the law.
This was the guy I hired to prune the (now defunct) tree in front. He supposedly had taken a course in tree care and pruning at the Desert Botanical Garden, potentially a BFD.
Well. If he did, he wasn’t payin’ any attention in class. 🙁
He pretty much trashed the tree, which I eventually had to have removed. How was I pi$$ed? Let me count the ways….
Those poor people eventually lost the house, where they’d lived while their kids grew to adulthood. My guess is, they were original owners. But their son’s escapades bankrupted them…so out they went.
Some fly-by-night contractors bought the place. They’ve been poking away at it for the past two or three years. It’s still a wreck…the pool empty and trashed, the backyard a disaster area, the front yard churned-up dirt and dead trees. Jayzuz!
The neighbors must love it…
The place is, one must allow, an inauspicious investment. It’s right on Feeder Street North-West, which carries traffic inbound from the working-class west side all the way to downtown Phoenix. So that means everybody who works in the high-rise office buildings down there, everybody who has a blue-collar job in the yards to the south of downtown, every lawn dude driving his truck and crew into town to mow and trim some richerati’s yard: they ALL HEAD SOUTH ON THAT STREET. Five fine mornings a week.
Well. And back north in the evening.
So the house is noisy and bathed in exhaust fumes, every rush hour. I guess some people don’t mind that, because Feeder N/W is lined with rather nice homes. The shack on the corner is the only one standing vacant.
Tbis is what happens, in lovely Arizona, if you happen to have a kid who gets in trouble with the law. It doesn’t just wreck the kid’s life. It wrecks yours, too.
A friend had that happen: her son got caught diddling a barfly who was three days (!!) under the age of consent. Her mother, having lost patience with telling her darling daughter to quit bringing men home and jumping into bed with them, called the cops and had my friend’s son arrested. Child molesting, y’know.
Yeah. He ended up serving a prison sentence, unable to get a decent job, living with his mother.
Fortunately, she’s a very smart and resourceful lady. She converted an old garage behind her historic home into a handsome studio, where her son dwells in peace.
But most people don’t have a fall-back like that. Apparently our former neighbors did not.
Hence, another tale from the ‘Hood…