Do You Love Your Neighborhood?

I don't. Maybe that's a big reason why I wouldn't have a problem moving. I was reading Ricë Freeman-Zachery's blog today and her title was: "Why I Love My Neighborhood." And I kept thinking, "I sure wish that I did!"

I used to.Mr. Jaspy in the front yard full of wildflowers the year we moved to Bailey.

When I lived in the mountain town of Bailey, Colorado, this was the view from my kitchen door.

My neighbor and the sister of my heart, Laura, walked and talked to people and found that nobody knew anyone much. So we started having a big neighborhood party in my driveway every autumn and it was way fun. We had the kids dig a fire pit and line it with rocks they found in yards and on the side of the road. Basically, it cost me a bunch of Sunny-D and a few batches of cookies. The party cost a couple of hundred dollars every year. I bought hamburgers and hot dogs at Costco and we had a few bales of straw around the firepit. Everyone brought a dish to share and everyone knew to steer clear of Lonny's dish and didn't complain when she made up a BIG plate of the left-overs to take home to her hubby, Psycho Bill, who was thankfully too anti-social to come mingle with us. We had the kids put a big pile of branches from beetle-kill trees in the firepit and then kept the hose at hand ready to put out any fires that might start from the sparks.

Maybe the most fun was when we had the kids set up a course down the rocky hump in the middle of the dirt road we lived on for the adults to ride the wagons down. There was a jump made of an old piece of plywood and some rocks. The jump was mandatory. The person who made it the furthest without falling off won bragging rights. I love that place! Aspen Lane in Burland Ranchettes on top of Crow Hill. We all knew all the dogs too. People would call and rat Jaspy out when he got too far afield because they knew how freaked out I was that time he disappeared for 36 hours. When it snowed a lot, someone just came and plowed my driveway. I never knew who did it. When I had to move here to the hot place (aka Phoenix), one of the neighbors sent her son and his friend to pack my moving truck because that's what they did for work and she knew I wouldn't want my stuff to get broken if it was packed wrong.

The view from my home office window. That's Mt. Bailey in the background between the trees.

You look at stuff like 9/11 and what's happened to oil prices because of people's greed, how the shelters overflow every summer because people don't know what to do with their pets when they go on vacation or because the dog is old or sick or he barks, or they are abandoning their house and leave their pets inside when they go because they can't afford the house or to feed the dog, or they're moving and it's too much trouble to take the poor thing with them. It makes you sick. But then you go outside your door and you have renewed hope for humanity when a neighbor smiles and says hello.

Of course, I still haven't caught the little bastard who scratched really rude words into the paint on the backs of Jeepy and Coopah S. Maybe his parents will move and leave HIM in the house.

That's why I'm looking for a new house in a new neighborhood. But I'm longing for Bailey. The home of my heart.