Really boring day off with me sleeping 9 hours due to menstral cramps, popping meds for the cramps, the exhaustion that goes along with it and mowing the in-laws' yard and earning $20...and being alone. I never see Jon anymore. He's always at work...or I am. Then Jon comes home for an hour, we eat something tasty then he informs me he's heading to his other mistress, Shane's house. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't really care, but hey, I've seen the man a total of one hour a day all week...and yesterday was his day off, during which he changed the oil in my engine but I saw him....maybe 5 hours all told as he was running errands and such and talking to his mom. (I don't mind sharing him with his mom, she's going through something and I'm not sure what.)
Then I go outside once he leaves to dump some trash in the recycle bin and a guy walks over.
"Hi. I'm Jerry. Jerry's son." He indicates the nice house next door that's been empty since March. "Someone broke in and stole the plumbing out of the basement, did you see anything?"
Oh, shit. My blood just runs cold. "No, no, I didn't. That's awful."
We have a brief conversation in which I promise to call the cops if I see anything suspicious at all. I verified that the realtor drives a blue GMC SUV and that the kid that mows the lawn has a white glass repair van. I already knew that this Jerry is driving his dad's special black Caddy we nicknamed the Batmobile before he died. That old man was soooo excited to get that car, he acted like a ten year old and it has so many gadgets on it (Old Jerry explained them to us in great detail) that it really was the Batmobile, at least to us poor folk.
I come back inside and phone Jon.
He HAS seen something over there. Two guys in an escort messing with the central air. I keep him on the line and hand him to Jerry. They talk.
And I am alone again. Waiting for Jon to come home. I don't feel safe here. A few months ago the neighbor girl's car was stolen. Now, the other neighbor's plumbing a/c and furnace coils have been stolen...probably, all while we were home. And we are the house in the middle. I've always thought we have nothing really worth stealing. But, then, we do have plumbing, cars, and a furnace. And we'd be crippled if any of those things went missing or broken.
I want out of this neighborhood. No down payment, no nothing. And probably no one would want to buy this crap shack with its shaky plumbing and other issues--most of them less serious. Plus, we'd have to sell it to be able to move elsewhere....leaving it vulnerable to break-ins.
Sigh. I hate being ghetto adjacent. Three years ago, we weren't ghetto adjacent. Now, however, we are.
This sounds better.
I want to go back to my roots. Funny, Jon prefers my roots even those these urban roots are his. He'd rather live with the cornfields and the cows than the people.
Too many people, too much anonymity. I lived in a very small community. When someone was robbed, there was an 80 percent chance someone recognized the culprit. Why? Because to know where we lived and to know our habits, you had to frequent the area. And country people don't miss too much. They know each other's cars, work habits and just patterns in general. When someone suspected something wrong, you'd get a direct phone call or a visit...and that neighbor would be toting some sort of firearm--just in case. Why? Because it the sheriff managed to find the address--an hour later (it would take about that long for them to drive there) it would be too late to do much good.
My family unfortunately had some experience with the county sheriff taking forever and my dad arming himself and me with various guns while we were waiting and the culprits were running about the area near our house after wrecking their truck into the ditch next to our driveway. Scary shit. All while the corn was 10 feet tall..impossible to know where the bad guys were. Of course, they got away, but dad wasn't leaving us unarmed either.
Maybe I'll get really lucky and a cyclone will transport my house and its contents safely to a rather uninhabited area just like the Land of Oz.
Unrelated side note from back home: Amish in the U.S.
For the uninitiated, a "large" family for the Amish is at least 5 children...usually more like 8. But, hey, for all their inhumane treatment of their own family members, animals, and such, I never once caught any of them stealing copper plumbing. They DO commit crimes, mostly against each other. Weird, but true.
I'd still like to introduce a bunch of Amish into Detroit and see if they could turn the city into a big desolate farm. I really think they could. And I really think it would be an improvement. Maybe it would be a public service: Amish in Da Hood!
No comments:
Post a Comment