A View from the Gutter

         The ugly suburbs sprawling over hill and dale.  I wonder if it was all woods and fields forty years ago?  Sometimes I like to look at a place and re-create it in my mind, imagine it as the place it once was.

          Alas, I do hate cleaning out the gutters.  Wrestling with a 32-foot ladder.  Getting my knuckles all scraped to hell.  Looking down from those risky heights.  The house is so damned tall that I rarely clean the gutters, but these blasted silver maples keep clogging them, causing them to overflow.  Now we've got carpenter ants in the rotted wood... I've learned that when you purchase a really old house, it's with the assumption that your home is going to be your hobby.  It will take all the spare time, and energy, and money you can give it.  My whole life is running around plugging holes, doing quick fixes, temporary triage just to keep it all from crumbling to the earth.

          When I was young, I enjoyed dangling from great heights, but that day is long gone.  When I was a renter, I loved nothing more than a quiet, rainy day.  But that is gone, too.  Now when it rains, I think about the gutters.  And the rotten wood.  And the carpenter ants.