Impermanence, or Safe as Houses

May 2011

Our quiet working-class neighborhood has gone through a lot of changes in the almost 20 years we’ve been here. We live at the end of a cul de sac — dead end street sounds so harsh — and when we moved in there were several houses occupied by their original owners. All people in their 70s or older. The demographics covered at least three races, occupations from traditional blue collar to professional and a gay couple of each gender. Quite a diverse mix, and quite wonderful in its own way.

We worked at home with hard-to-explain jobs which made us rare birds to be sure and were then the closest thing to yuppies on the street — though that appellation would be a stretch even if you only considered our ages. We loved the neighborhood in the “good old days” and it loved us back. But as the aged aged and one by one passed away, the composition of the neighborhood changed. From being one of the youngest couples on the street we are now among the oldest and there are even a couple more houses sheltering self-employed, work-at-home types. So now we find ourselves welcoming newcomers in much the same way we were welcomed. Completing the circle I suppose.

The larger neighborhood has also changed. Antique stores, art galleries, and tea houses have replaced plumbing supply houses, moving companies and biker bars. We even have an expensive restaurant with valet parking as well as a doggie day spa. But we still have a real hardware store, a Laundromat and the best ice cream and candy maker in the city.

Another addition is the mega-church whose pastor’s books are reviewed elsewhere herein. It occupies 2/3rds of a block abutting an old machine tool factory; once the pride of the city when it was a machine tool capital. The workers in that plant and others nearby built and lived in most of the houses hereabouts.

Also on the mega-church block are a chain auto parts store, a hospital’s satellite clinic and 8 or 10 houses. The houses are small and old, not at all grand, but cute and mostly well-kept as they say. The other day I noticed a large backhoe in a yard and then the boarded up windows and condemned stickers caught my eye. The last house in the row abuts one of the church’s parking lots. I admit that a church with thousands of members and 4 or 5 services a week plus affinity groups, free Wi-Fi and coffee not to mention outreach programs needs ample parking. Someone once said that the volunteers who manage the parking lot traffic on Sunday mornings could moonlight as air traffic controllers.

Change is all around us and even within us all the time. The pace of some change is slow enough to safely ignore for awhile. We might notice the individual markers — plumbing supply house morphs into antique mall or greasy spoon into fancy burger joint — without allowing ourselves to really grasp the trend. Then we wake up one day to find all the good-paying factory jobs are gone or that there are no independent bookstores left in the wake of Borders, Barnes & Noble and Amazon. Perhaps it is a blessing to see the trees but not the forest sometimes. And perhaps by the time the familiar is completely gone we have become accustomed to the new and our regret and grief are lessened.

I have a visceral reaction to houses being demolished. I realize my reaction is deeply rooted in my own sense of security or insecurity in the world and that I project my own fears or hopes upon those houses being razed. Another part of the emotional issue is just how quickly and easily a house is reduced to rubble.

All the houses I have been fortunate enough to live in have felt solid, substantial, and protective. Sometimes the people I lived with or the circumstances didn’t feel completely safe but the houses themselves held a material comfort. Even today with the safety of our house and home threatened by serious illness and its accompanying issues, the house we live in — as modest as it is — holds great comfort for me and the others who live here. My partner often says that this has been a good house for us, and it has and will be, I hope, for quite some time.

I know that the safety of houses or homes is mostly an illusion — especially during tornado season — and an emotional fiction. Life crosses the threshold and streams in with the sunlight. And that is as it should be. But I might like it more if they disassembled those houses, taking the time to salvage useful or recyclable materials rather than just creating another load for the landfill.