Gentrification

Retired Educator, here. I have been looking at the various drafts hanging about in my Blogger queue, trying to finish some, and strengthen my resolve enough to delete others.

This is one of unfinished status:

in the 1970s, my folks bought a few acres of beautifully wooded land on a man-made lake where they hoped to one day build their "dream house"-- a french provincial of grandes allées kerplunked among the take-off taras, plantation porticos and all, in the then newly incorporated "village" about fifteen or so miles away from my stepmother's home town in north carolina.

don't touch that sentence!

It -- the village -- was a straight shot down highway 70 east, as were, in my young opinion, all good things, chief among which was the beach, were the carolina beaches.

my mom's family was not terribly loving, but they did have a house right on atlantic beach down at morehead city. that made up for a lot of love; i could imagine all the happiness in the world there. those rolling, rolling waves! (still, the beach there ran east to west, which was odd.) my birthday is in the wintertime, and making a roaring driftwood fire in the stone fireplace of the beachhouse was gift plenty. unfortunately, my stepmother and her siblings made the place nothing but a bone of contention upon her parents' death -- or so i have been told.

one summer, a step-cousin and i made stew out of periwinkles.

anyway, that plot of village land off of highway 70 was considered a ritzy location, kind of a country-club environment, but not quite, because the real country club in town had a bunch of uppity blacks buying and renovating the sweet little ranch houses all around its walled perimeter. things were gentrifying, but in the wrong direction for nervous white people.

(i had sex with a guy named sam in the utility building behind the country club pool.)

which is why they were all building dream houses in a fake village off of highway 70 east.

downtown was dying, too, don't you know. ah, but villages don't even have downtowns -- a stroke of brilliance by the founding... villagers; one less thing to worry about. in fact, being nothing beyond a sort of bedroom community, our village lacked any commercial endeavor whatsoever, although a country club of its own did, in fact, spring up. we couldn't afford to be members at both country clubs, so we continued to drive into town to make our obligatory social appearances. i never even saw the inside of the village country club, although i was chased off of its tennis courts with great regularity.

in the dying town downtown, one of rothafel's roxy theatres was closing -- with john wayne still stuck on the deco marquee; you could choose between five or six movies at the mall cineplex. somehow, next door to the roxy, l. d. giddens jewelry lived on (founded in 1859) while everyone else sold out, died out, or ran off.

(i don't believe that rothafel actually built, or even had *anything* to do with, the "rialto" or the "roxy" or whatever the hell that cinema was named. anecdotes and legends, anecdotes and legends.)

anyway, we were among the first homebuilders out there, in the village ("village" in the sense of ye olde towne -- the sort of village dictated by tastefully situated kitsch signage) that was out a piece on highway 70 east, just downwind from a roadside turkey farm, and just a skosh closer to the beach than we'd ever been, thereby securing my childish approbation.

they bought the land, but then we moved to miami for a few years, as people are prone to do. the weird thing was that i only went to the beach twice the whole time we lived in miami, smack-dab on that glitzy ocean -- but once installed at the village, i made regular 4-hour treks to the carolina shore, and a good deal of the fun was getting there. smelling it, already, in kinston, new bern, havelock.

we met our nearest neighbors the first week after our return from miami. they had built a boat ramp all the way from the road down to the lake. we were especially interested because the 25 ft swath had been taken out of -- you guessed it -- our land.

so we didn't exactly start out friendly. i remember, in fact, being sent to sit in the overheated car where all three of us kids proceeded to go slightly nuts. the conversation among the adults was deemed too grown-up for us. they should have heard ours...

our neighbors had, of course, cleared out all the trees and bushes, most especially taking away the rows of english boxwood that my father's father -- still alive at that time -- had propagated from cuttings. from years ago, i remembered the rows of rusting coffee cans with those small deep, deep green glossy leaves peeping over their sides.

there were four of them... neighbors, not boxwoods. the mom (who had a penchant for cosmetic surgery and popping in unannounced), the dad, the young son (about whom we never really knew anything), and the older daughter (roughly my age and into wrecking vehicles and getting new ones in replacement before the week was out).

some sort of uneasy temporary peace had been hammered out.

the dream house was built, larger than originally planned, and over budget. i drove an old but lovely 1963 ford falcon futura convertible back and forth between school in town and my village home.

[actually, that is a lie. it was just a regular old ford falcon, and i don't remember its year, although '63 is certainly possible. it was white. why lie? well, i mean, just look at the picture topping this blog entry! isn't that a beautiful piece of car? oh, and the real ford falcon was a hand-me-down from my step mother's mother. she died from complications of alzheimer's, causing my stepmother to take up yoga.]

after the boat ramp/boxwood debacle, our interactions with our neighbors mostly consisted of cordially dodging them, which was hard to do given the mother's dedication to popping through the spindly hedge (that we had to plant because they demolished all the existing trees and shrubbery, especially the rows of boxwood) and following us into the garage when we'd arrive home. she went through a brief period of actually taking our mail out of the mailbox so that she could hand deliver it -- saying that she was afraid someone would drive by and take it before we got home (ye olde "drive-by mail theft").

twice, the father drained the lake.

the whole lake.

the first time, he thought that the dam needed adjustment and rowed over to "fix" it. we think he wasn't happy with the lake level and wanted to somehow make it rise. he insisted on going out on his motorboat despite the rules against it (you know, because of trivial stuff like underwater tree stumps...). the lake mysteriously got lower and lower over a week's time -- eventually he 'fessed up when the community was faced with the steep price of dam diagnostics. it was summer and oh, the fun of mud and insects. no sailing, no fishing, just mud and insects. i skipped out to the beach.

i cannot recall how or why he drained the lake the second time but by then my dad had been voted head of "water management" and so the whole thing got really ugly... as things can when local government becomes involved in private affairs. (actually, almost every head of village household was some sort of elected or appointed official.)

our neighbors put in a swimming pool, which was cool, it was just that we had, thanks to their efforts at the boat ramp, an undesired but unobstructed view of it. that pool made us all think of boxwood. and they didn't tan well, our neighbors.

they also installed a huge trampoline into their backyard wonderland, though it was rarely used.

the mom had her boobs enhanced, her derriere lifted, and anything liposuctioned that could be liposuctioned. she was always shades of black and blue, puffy, and/or wrapped.

the whole family had fine, distinctive noses -- long and thin to the point of looking slightly pinched, with a bump on the ridge. in truth, we often remarked that the parents looked more like siblings.

the mom was the first to have rhinoplasty. we could tell by the honker of a bandage that she went around with, and her racoon halfmoon eyes.

so, as she does from time to time, my stepmother decided to have a lawn party.

my stepmom was the greatest mom in the world. i had so much fun knowing her, learning from her (though, most would argue, not learning quite enough). she could be a hoot, as well as an anchor, a rock. she had been an accomplished ballerina, then a schoolteacher. i came home to find her stirring spaghetti sauce while effortlessly holding her feet and arms in second position or dancing while she vacuumed.

she could be fierce, too. i pretty much skipped my entire sophomore year of high school due to a dire need to play tennis and hang out with my no good friends. i was home one day due to a rotten cold when a truancy officer knocked on the door. he was being pushy, i guess, and blaming her for my abscences. she blasted him to smithereens... i never felt so loved! (not that she didn't jump on my case next, and most severely.)

so... my stepmother decided to have a lawn party the same week that the dad and the daughter next door had their rhinoplasties. but so what! i mean -- what could happen?

so... a garden party, a lawn party, with all the new village neighbors and with our established town friends, too. my mom was in her element -- the charming hostess with the mostest, all beautiful and flitting around, pointing her toes.

so... one too many scotch and sodas, i guess. my mom had already tied a knot in a cherry stem with her tongue -- her great, and only, party trick. she must have felt some pressure to perform.

i was standing nearby when she floated over to a group of her old friends. our new nextdoor neighbors drifted in that same direction, on a collision course. i sensed oncoming disaster.

the dad and daughter sported pretty broad, but fleshcolored, bandaids on their noses, and the mom looked like she had fought 10 rounds, leading with her chin. the son wasn't there -- he was probably in the swimming pool, watching the action from there through the wide gaps in the hedge.

with a great big smile, my mom decided to introduce our annoying neighbors to her old friends --
saying, in words whose effect we were never able to undo,

"i'd like you to meet mr. and mrs. hose nose..."

without ever explaining why, my folks sold their dream home in 1990 and moved to the research triangle park area to live in what amounts to a condo. sure, it's fancy and she has it looking like something straight out of architectural digest, but it's no village french provincial and they've no idea who their neighbors are.

still,they cannot seem to break away from the pull of highway 70 east, which runs west all the way to arizona.