Dichotomy: noun di·chot·o·my \dī-ˈkä-tə-mē also də-\ : a difference between two opposite things : a division into two opposite groups. (source: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dichotomy)
My neighborhood is unusual.
I don’t mean that I live on probably the only street in my city that has two published authors as next door neighbors (sorry, just had to throw that in there!). No, my neighborhood is an unusual one in that it has a very interesting, dichotomous nature.
My own street is a quiet one. Generally older people reside here. Even the young people who rent houses are temperate, well-mannered, and hard-working college students. Tires hum along in a pleasant rhythm along the brick pavement. The narrow sidewalks are cracked in places, yet are still walkable. The houses here are a bit worn, but generally still solid. Even the one unoccupied home on the block, two doors down from mine, has been nicely kept up.
I can walk just a block or two to the west and see houses that are falling into more aggressive states of disrepair. A number of houses even have the telltale condemned sign on the door. There are even a number of empty plots where homes once stood, victims of decades of neglectful owners and tenants or, in at least one case, fire. People often while the time away by sitting on their porches, drinking cans of beer, smoking, or merely watching whoever or whatever passes on by.
One street, about four blocks west of my home, stands out. There is a house, perched on a small hill at one end of the block, that looks as if it might topple over in a harsh crosswind. The pillars supporting the porch roof lean slightly to one side. The exterior badly needs a paint job, the roof is missing more than a few shingles, and an upstairs window has been replaced by a vintage 7-Up sign.
Then there is a home at the other end of the block, a large and well-maintained Victorian, newly and artfully painted. The owners have a sizable, nicely landscaped lot that includes an elegant gazebo tucked neatly into a corner; all within the confines of a wrought-iron fence.
Typically though, when my son and I go for one of our frequent walks, we head east. We cross the street, pass by a hospice/ acute care facility and take a shortcut that involves a well-worn path and a gap in an aging chain link fence. A couple more blocks east and we find ourselves on the campus of Augustana College.
Augustana is a private, liberal arts college that boasts an enrollment of around 2,500 students. The campus is known for its beauty. It is 115 partially wooded acres, with a long path that runs through said woods and along a natural slough. The quadrangle at the heart of the campus is a crisscross of sidewalks that issue from the main academic buildings, themselves a mix of old architecture and modern construction.
I enjoy walking around campus, and not just for its aesthetic appeal. There is much to be said for soaking up a bit of the energy of ambitious, goal-oriented young people, all of whom have hope that they are at the cusp of amazing things (and many of them, I suspect, eventually will do amazing things).
My own street had a somewhat different tenor just a couple years ago.
There was a house, about five doors down from mine, that from the outside straddled the very fine line between worn/ weathered and about to be condemned/ potentially dangerous. Two middle-aged brothers lived there along with their elderly mother. I never got the impression that any of them held a job… in fact, I later learned that one of the brothers had been to prison on drug-related charges. They had both been busted for dumping mysteriously acquired car tires into a nearby rural river. I think they actually subsisted on some sort of black market tire trade, thus accounting for the stacks of them outside of their garage.
Mom and the brothers were abruptly and forcibly evicted from their home for non-payment of their mortgage. The house sat abandoned for a month or two. Myself and another neighbor cleaned up the broken glass and other garbage. Someone else arranged for the stack of tires to be carted away and recycled.
Not long after, I learned that Ray and Carol, the owners of the house next door, were preparing to buy the property. I assumed that the couple (a retired police officer and wife, a semi-retired hairdresser) would restore the house and rent it out to college students. That was similar to their own plan, but unfortunately the condition of the house was so poor that it was beyond repair. They chose instead to demolish the house and create a greenspace for their grandchildren.
Ray invited both myself and my fellow-author-next-door-neighbor for a quick tour the night prior to the bulldozer’s arrival. The first thing I noticed upon stepping inside was the smell, a cocktail of mildew, tobacco, over-used cooking grease, and a few other scents that were harder to identify and I preferred to not think about. It was just about dusk, so the only light was a burnt-orange cast courtesy of the beginning of that evening’s sunset. There was no carpet and no furniture, so our voices echoed ever so slightly.
There were holes in walls, in the floor, in ceilings. The wallpaper (what there was of it) was ripped and/ or stained. Windows were cracked and screens were torn.
“Man, you really tore this place up,” I said to Ray.
“Nah,” he said, shaking his head. “I took a couple doorknobs, that’s it.”
The kitchen sink was covered in an alarmingly thick layer of grime and the stovetop was splattered with food, likely the result of a spaghetti dinner gone bad.
“These people lived like this…” I trailed off, unsure whether I was making a statement or asking a question. The condition of the house was well past the benign neglect I had observed throughout other parts of the neighborhood. This home had been abused, a victim of anger and family fights and self-loathing and the sloth of those who didn’t feel they deserved any better.
Ray responded with a shrug and a long sigh. I continued my tour. It was clear that this was once a fine home. There were three rather spacious bedrooms. Large bay windows were throughout (albeit, the glass was opaque with dirt). There was a sizable yard, though at this point it was more of a twisted jungle of tall grass and weeds than any sort of lawn.
One interesting feature was the garage. The house was poised on a fairly steep hill, accessible from the street by some cement stairs. The garage was street level and the two brothers spent a lot of time hanging out in front of it, usually leaving quite a bit of trash there, along with the aforementioned tire collection.
I yanked open a wooden door (not easily, it was stuck) and ventured down the narrow stairwell from the house to the empty garage. The garage itself was empty, save for an old milk crate containing motor oil and brake fluid containers. A large mouse (okay, I think it was a rat) skittered across the dirty, dusty floor.
The house came down over the course of the next week or so.
I visited the site at one point with my kids. We were greeted with mounds of dirt and debris. Ray told me that his contractor had already started hauling everything away and he expected to begin landscaping soon.
The steep hill no longer has any evidence of the former rat trap garage. Instead you will find retaining walls and planters, with annuals and perennials planted throughout. The lot at the crest of the hill is now lush, green grass. There are no more used tires, broken glass, or empty beer cans littering my path when I want to take a walk.
Where there was once ugliness, a little bit of beauty has taken hold.
So my neighborhood is steeped in dichotomy and I am at the tipping point.
Beauty and ugliness.
Ambition and sloth.
Renewal and decay.
I can walk out my door on any given day and go whichever way I choose. I can step east or step west. I can help effect some change, fix what is broken, and repair what is worn out. I can walk with the ambitious or lounge with the slothful.
It’s up to me.
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