We live in a neighborhood ruled by an “association.” Perhaps you know the situation. If not, here’s how it works. You live on a stereotypical cul-de-sac, pay a monthly fee (not a choice for us) and the association keeps up the common areas, landscaping, playgrounds and allows you access to the pool.
It is a nice neighborhood. They keep everything looking great and the litany of rules is supposed to keep the value of our homes from dropping – not exactly a successful effort in the recent downturn. But I get it. I saw the Stepford Wives back in middle school. I wish I had seen the developer who slung up these houses with 2×4’s, cheap siding and a nail gun. But that’s another story.
I have run crossways of the rules during the many years we have lived here. We are not hellions, by any definition, by the way, but it’s hard to color inside the lines when there are so many damned lines. And I am not good with lines anyway.
Within the first month of moving here I was on the wrong side of the law after installing a perfectly good concrete dog in the front yard. Not surprisingly, the neighborhood enforcers told me to move it. I fought the law and the law won – because my kids wanted to continue to go to the pool without being pariahs, so I bent. There were a few other incidents of suburban disobedience now and then, but my wife smoothed them over. Then this summer, we got a letter saying we were in violation of the association rules in regards to our mailbox and green trash dumpster.
The details don’t warrant retelling. Let’s just say I drove every street in the neighborhood and counted the trash dumpsters that were as “misplaced” as ours. I called the 800 number and left a message that, yet again, my wife had to smooth over.
To change your property in any way, you have to ask permission. I live by the Biblical logic that it is easier to get forgiveness than permission. I think it was in the Bible. Perhaps it was Julia Child’s cookbook. Anyway, no forgiveness here.
If you paint your home, an “architectural committee” has to approve the color. Anyone who knows me figured that I would get stinkosaurusly upwind of the powers that be regularly and I have tried not to let them down. No matter what you may hear at the association meetings, I did not purposefully select Beef Jerky Brown as a trim color. Me and the paint mixer at the hardware invented it. It had curb appeal. Made me hungry to look at it. BJ Brown didn’t make it past the first round of voting on So You Think You Can Paint?
The problem is, I grew up on a farm where a man could paint a picture of Jesus on his wall and turn chickens loose in his yard if he wanted. My grandparents had an outhouse. So I don’t understand why a developer can put a blue port-a-potty at the curb while building a new home down the street and I can’t put an outhouse in my backyard (not that I have tried). Sheetrock Bubba exiting the plastic john can’t be helping home values any more than my evicted concrete dog.
Needless to say, I don’t attend the wine and cheese socials or the other neighborhood events and they locals are probably happy about my absence.
It is just difficult, at my age, to ask permission to improve my home as I see fit (since I’m paying for it) from a group who takes one look at my hair and calls security thinking Jimmy Page has wandered off tour. Snide looks aside, I haven not constructed an outrageous plywood phallic symbol to poke fear into the locals. I have not made a spectacle of my social life by inviting 100 friends to clog the cul-de-sac for a Tupperware or drinking party. I have not fired a weapon in the direction of any squirrel – yet. I have not chased joggers with bottle rockets on the 4th of July. I’m doing pretty good here. I just have to paint my mailbox and build a little trellis to disguise our trash dumpster (that, ironically, the association sold us).
When I finish this, I am going to write a letter bitching about that ice cream truck roaming the streets squirting the tune to “The Sting” over and over like a monotonous dream brought on by a high fever. If I lose that struggle, the concrete dog is coming back out, by god, swimming pool privileges be damned.
