Saturday was the beautiful, sunny day that was promised, and I set out bright and early to get 80 copies of the HOA-approved event flyer made. I spent the next few hours going door-to-door to personally deliver the flyers. Though I have lived in this neighborhood for nearly six years, I had a different view of the homes and the people by knocking on doors. We drive through the neighborhood daily and frequently walk the dog in the neighborhood, yet I was shocked by some of the disrepair I noticed when actually standing on the porches of my neighbors. It was not as if rats were scurrying past, but there were signs of a depressed economy that I had not noticed from a distance.
We have good relationships with all of our immediate neighbors, and I am familiar with many other neighbors because I served on the HOA Board for about a year in 2007. There is not much turnover in our neighborhood, so I have seen many of the neighbors at previous events and meetings. In addition to many people not being home (so much for that idea), many others did not come to the door even if there were three cars in the driveway. One person looked at me through the window, but would not open the door. (I'm scary, right?) Another opened the door and stuck out her hand, but hid behind the door. (It was like Thing from the Addams Family.) At another home a woman lying on the bed in the front room called out through an open window, "We're not interested." And one woman even told me that she would never have anything to do with the HOA again.
A third of the way through my route I stopped by my house and suggested to my wife that we should consider moving. The fact is that I found myself judging my neighbors. The little voice in the back of my head was telling me that these people are not my people. My people wear Birkenstocks. My people listen to NPR. If my people are not home, it is because they are out in the woods communing with nature. These people not only made me feel like an alien, they made me feel like I was wasting my time. I had no reason to believe that these people would care about Earth Day, complete a survey, or read a handout. In my mind, these people would not care that Simon from No Kidding Goat's Milk Soap was donating soap as door prizes for the event, or that Holli from Healthy Home Market has committed to support our event too. Why? Because Wal-Mart is cheaper!
But...I did meet Brandon and his wife Julie, who live just around the corner with their two young children, and they were excited about coming out. And, if I'm honest with myself, a few other people were very nice, and many of the houses were in good repair. Perhaps I was allowing a few odd situations to shade my view of everyone. And we have invested too much in our house to sell anytime in the foreseeable future. So I picked up my flyers and sunglasses and set off to meet the other 2/3 of the neighborhood.
I saw some very well kept homes (along with a few that needed work), but most importantly I met some neat, enthusiastic people - families with kids, a young woman and her German Shepherd Blue (I remember him best), and an older man who moved into the neighborhood in 1990 and raised his children here. He talked to me for half an hour, and said he was going to bring his son's old laptop to the event to recycle it. He also said he would bring his guitar to play if the weather was nice.
The road to a sustainable community seems really long right now, and I am not certain a survey will yield much useful information. I wonder if I need to cast my net more broadly for a future project. Perhaps I could start a meet-up group at the library for the Steele Creek area, which is the district I live in. Regardless of what happens in the long run, in the near future my neighborhood will have its first Earth Day event!
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