A Middle-Aged Neighborhood

With a young and energetic dog in our midst again, I have forced myself back into a regular walking routine. I became lazy over the past few years. My exercise buddy Raven, our senior dog, had surgery on her leg at about the same time my middle-aged motivation began to wane. Good exercise aside, walking Tonka has also given me a chance to become reacquainted with our little corner of suburbia.

Built in the 1950s, the neighborhood where we live is also middle-aged. Here you find small brick ranch homes situated one after the other on a predictable grid. The developers chose typical suburban street names, one area using only the letter “C” (Cedar, Cherry, Concord, Crescent) and another named after colleges (Auburn, Baylor, Princeton, Rutgers).

When my parents moved from New Jersey to Colorado in 1958, we bunked for a few months in my uncle’s basement just one block east of here. That isn't the reason I chose this area. Instead, a mixed bag of issues related to selling my townhouse and purchasing a single-family home all seemed to converge in this one place.

One of my preferences was to live in an older, established neighborhood. I was ready for some space to dig in and get my hands dirty and boy, did they ever get dirty. A former rental, this house had been neglected for quite some time but I could tell it had good bones. Over the past 14 years it has been transformed from one of the neighborhood dregs to a place that shines with pride of ownership. My early jaunts up and down these suburban streets provided inspiration for home improvement and decorating ideas, as well as guidance about what not to do.

For instance, there is a home a few blocks from here with trim painted a lively Pepto-Bismol pink. Another house sports an ample front porch constructed in thick, beefy craftsman style, not exactly a good match for a mid-century modern brick ranch but otherwise nicely done. At the bottom of the hill someone added a second story over a small, enclosed carport. It looks as if a narrow trailer dropped right out of the sky and landed neatly on top. They painted the second story a mustard color to boot, just in case you didn’t notice the unusual architecture all by itself.

Up near the school live the Denver Broncos fans, complete with “Broncos Fan Parking Only” signs, blue and orange artificial flowers planted in the pots, and a blue lighthouse bedecked with the Broncos logo. A few blocks west a series of separate houses display first an extensive collection of cheerful garden gnomes, then plastic deer cavorting in the yard, then snarling cement lions guarding a front entrance, and finally a flock of pink flamingos looking hopelessly lost and thirsty in this city on the high plains.

We also have more than our fair share of foreclosed homes. You can tell right off, knee-high vegetation in the yard, legal notices stuck to the windows, a sad story behind each door.

Then there is the mystery house, unkempt, curtains perpetually drawn, weeds growing defiantly in an all-rock front yard designed to suppress weeds. On the roof is a large cross, illuminated with white Christmas lights, and three trumpeting angels next to a hand painted wooden sign proclaiming, in blood red paint, “I AM COM…” The final section of wood seems to have broken off but the message is still clear. For me, the house evokes a Stephen King story, Carrie.

My brother and his family live in one of the newer suburbs south of Denver, a community with restrictive covenants. The homes are beautiful, the yards immaculate, but there is a sameness, a planned, safe, boring repetition to it all. Maybe someday I too will choose such a lifestyle. For now, I prefer to dwell among the thirsty flamingos, the Carrie house, and the second story addition that fell from the sky. All these places are interesting in their own way. Together they help define the collective character of our middle-aged neighborhood.