Fighting City Hall in the rain

Surely I was not the only one surprised to wake to a wet, dreary world this morning. I overslept just a bit because I’m not used to many morning deadlines, but Jordan had asked me to be ready to go in the house at 7:55 because we were to meet with an engineer from the traffic department at eight-thirty, and he might be early. Of course he was late. But we enjoyed sitting on the porch in the rain, waiting and watching for him.

You see, they’ve put “No Parking” signs in front of our house, forbidding parking from 7-9 a.m. and 2-4 p.m. for the safety of the children at the school across the street. I have lived in this house twenty-seven years, and this is the first time parking in front has been an issue. For our three-car family with a skinny 1920s driveway, it’s a real problem. So I appealed to city councilwoman, and the appeal ended in the traffic office.

The gentleman who came out this morning was not the one I had corresponded with nor the one who had chosen the date and time of the meeting “in the field.” The gentleman who showed up, fifteen minutes late—when Christian had to leave though I’d made that timing plain in correspondence—clearly had little grasp of the situation. What he had was a lot of generic excuses, so that we never got a real answer to the question of why our house alone was chosen and what the penalty for violation was nor how equitably it would be applied. Police park there during prohibited hours, as do many citizens—we have pictures. After a lot of generalities about safety, state law, and neighborhood requests, he left with a promise to take it back to the office and a warning that the whole process—whatever that is—would have to start again. I have already drafted a letter of protest to be sent to his superior and several others, including the councilwoman and the school principal.

So that was my cheerless start to the day, but it proved to be a lovely day. The rain continued, slow and gentle, through most of the day, though it is gone tonight. It is still damp, wet, and blessedly cool. And I buckled down and wrote 1700 words today—a real record for me when working in nonfiction. Not sure they’re all keepers, but I wrote them. And I made a squash casserole for my supper and had happy hour with Mary, who has been away for several weeks.

Last night we had happy hour with a new neighbor—interesting and fun, a lovely young woman who has four children and a surgeon/husband at the county hospital. They have bought an older home that has been vacant for way too long with all the deferred maintenance that implies and are fixing it up. Our neighborhood owes them a debt of gratitude for restoring the charm of an older home and for keeping it out of the hands of developers who would turn it into multi-family units. Fun to meet new neighbors with different backgrounds and different ideas about the neighborhood.