Which House Has the Crazy People In It?

My husband and I live in a neighborhood that has covenants and an architectural review committee. Anything a resident wants to do that will affect the appearance of his house or yard must be approved. I'm not necessarily a fan of this sort of control; it just happens to exist in most of the neighborhoods around here. Once when my realtor son-in-law was visiting, we were discussing the merits and disadvantages of having covenants and an ARC. He asked, "If everything looks the same, how do you know which house has the crazy people in it?" Good point.

When I was a child living in a small town outside of Syracuse, New York, my siblings, friends and I knew where the crazy person lived. He lived just a short distance from my house and we had to walk past his house (I don't know why, but we assumed it was a he) every day on our way to and from school, from grade school through high school. The house was around the corner from our house and part way down a hill. It was tucked back on the neglected lot, behind lots of overgrown weeds, trees and shrubs. There was a puddle just between the edge of the street and the beginning of the yard that belonged to the house. Legend had it that the small puddle was quicksand. In my memory, the puddle was ALWAYS there, no matter the time of year. It didn't freeze over in the winter, and it didn't evaporate in hot weather. None of us was ever brave enough, or to our minds, foolhardy enough, to step in it. We never saw the man who lived in the house. Ever. But at Christmas time each year, in a glass display case that was always on a post in front of the house, there appeared a creche. We never saw anyone put it there. We never saw anyone take it down after the Christmas season was over.

We concluded that whoever lived in that house must have been a crazy person. After all, what other sort of a person would have quicksand, and not do something about it? What other sort of a person could manage to never be seen by anyone, not even by our parents? And what other sort of a person would put a creche out for everyone to see, and yet never bother to meet the neighbors he presumably put the creche out for? We didn't trick or treat there, we didn't sell Girl Scout cookies there, and we didn't ask for any sort of school-related donations there. We didn't dare.

I haven't been back to my hometown in over thirty-five years, and I suppose that if the person who lived in that house was the age of my parents, he may not still be alive. I'll never know who he was, whether he really was a crazy person or just an incredibly shy person. But I think that as children, we preferred not to know. It was just so very scary, and just so very exciting, to have such a mystery in our lives. And we knew which house had the crazy person in it.
Posted by knittergran at 6:36 PM 0 comments
Labels: ARC, covenants, crazy person