So hibernate already.

We got some new neighbors. They're up from the city. Actually, they aren't even here full-time yet. They're still having work done on the house next door. 

The family is friendly. Jewish, very Orthodox. No wild parties on Friday nights. The kids sort of like our big fluffy dog, Izzy, but don't want to get close to him. As I understand it, the Orthodox don't have anything particularly against dogs -- but they are very confused by them. Possibly the idea of a pet as a companion strikes them as odd. I've heard that expressed from other people too, as it happens. 

For his part, Izzy would love to play with them. But the kids are also terrified of him, because their experience with dogs is so limited. They don't seem to get that even a dog who is trained to sit will not do so because someone yells "Sit!" from twenty feet away. 

I discovered myself that there is a big learning curve with dogs, much of which I've detailed on this very blog over the years. 

The kids wanted to see the dog over the fence, which was fine. Even protected by the fence, they'd all scatter like pigeons when Izzy made the slightest move toward them. 

I've seen other kids who came up from the city who also are scared of dogs, but for different reasons. We had a black family who came from a neighborhood where only the bad guys had big dogs, so big fuzz Tralfaz scared the kids silly. I felt bad for those kids, and I still do. Creeps ruin everything -- even dogs.  

Anyway, the Orthodox family went home Sunday morning. Which was good, because if the kids had seen this guy in my backyard, they might never have returned. 

Welcome to the exurbs.

I was bringing Izzy around the side of the house yesterday when I spotted Yogi at the base of the yard. Izzy had not noticed him yet. So turn on a dime we did, and went to use the front yard instead. 

I then monitored the situation through the window. Eventually the big dude did a couple of big yawns and trundled out through the high grass. Later a fox showed up, maybe looking for leftovers, and rolled in whatever scent the bear left behind. I guess that will help the fox avoid being an hors d'oerve himself. 

The bear bottom line is, you move to the country, you get to see some wildlife. I have not heard of any bear attacks in the time I've lived here, even on people who go into the woods on purpose. But my neighbors who turn the cats out at night might want to have a second thought. Ohio is not the only place where cats can be consumed, you know. 

If I see the bear again, I will try to teach him a command. "Hey ber! Ir zol geyn kheyberneyt itst!" ("Hey, bear! You should go hibernate already!" according to Google Translate.) It could work. 

Town and country.

Had a strange dog-related experience with someone in the neighborhood the other day.

There's a new lady in the area; she has a couple of young children and a tiny little dog. (No, she doesn't live in the Witness Security Program/FBI Safe House; I don't know where she lives but it's not there.)

I tried to keep away from her, I ought to let you know that. She was coming down the block with little dog but no little kids, and I was in the front yard with Senior Varsity Dog Tralfaz. Tralfaz is an enormous hairy beast, although the friendliest pup you know, and he sometimes scares children and other dogs with his enthusiastic greeting. That being: A few really loud barks, then he barrels at them like a locomotive. Who would be alarmed by that?

Typical action scene 

Anyone would be alarmed by that, I know, so I dragged and cajoled him against his will into the backyard until the lady went by. Well, he immediately pulled me to the farther end of the house to watch when she came out the other side, but he was quiet about it. Once she had gone, I took him back to the front to resume what we were aiming to do out there in the first place -- walking up the street, in the same direction from which she had come.

What I didn't realize was that as soon as she got to the end of the block, she and her dog turned around and started back up in our wake.

So now we had the world's slowest chase: me trying to keep my crazy bear from realizing the little dog was behind us, Tralfaz dawdling to sniff every molecule that the little dog had left behind, her and her dog strolling along, and me also trying to glance back to see if they were gaining on us (they were).

When the inevitable happened and we met, our greeting was quite friendly. Tralfaz immediately went nose-to-nose with the little dog, and at first all was fine; then the little dog did an aggressive growl and the lady had to pull him back. Which was no problem, as she is quite tall and presumably strong and her dog weighs maybe ten or fifteen pounds, maybe a tenth of Tralfaz's fighting weight.

We chatted a bit, complimenting each other's canine chums; she asking about dog groomers. I found out that she and the family just moved up to the Hudson Valley from the city and are just finding their way around. And then she said something that surprised me: that she'd cleaned up after her dog and didn't know what to do with it so she left it on the fire hydrant.

That sentence didn't compute for me, so I just let it fly by as we went on to the next topic. Soon we parted, and I took Mr. Friendly back down the hill.

Sure enough, hanging from the fire hydrant closest to my house was a plastic pet waste bag.

I realized suddenly that she really is from the city originally, and probably a neighborhood where there are municipal trash cans on every corner. Clean up after your pup there, drop it in with the Styrofoam coffee cups and chip bags and soda bottles in the corner can, and be on your way. This is something she didn't know about suburban life, that while we may have sidewalks in our neighborhoods, we don't have public trash cans.

We have to take care of our own trash. I use an outdoor bin in the backyard. Another family I know leaves the waste bags hidden behind the bushes until trash day. Another family keeps the garbage can outside all the time for that purpose.

Not to belabor a distasteful topic, but I had to think about how to deal with it. Of course if I speak with her again I'll suggest she follow my lead on this. Meanwhile, there was a dog waste bag hanging on a fire hydrant in front of the house of my despised neighbor, the dog hater, the one who I have mentioned will probably be led out of his house by the feds one day.

I told my wife about this situation. She thought that it was hilarious, but I knew we'd get blamed for this. And really, I don't want any confrontations with the unpleasant occupant next door. I don't want any contact with him at all.

So, while walking Nipper later, under cover of darkness, I took the bag off the fire hydrant and put it in my holding pen. The lady will probably think the garbage men picked it up, that it's part of whatt they do -- so if I'm not astute, the fire hydrant could turn into a veritable Christmas tree of dog poop.

The moral of the story is, I guess, comes from the old Town Mouse and Country Mouse tale by Aesop, or maybe the Town Mouse, Country Mouse, and Suburb Mouse by Roz Chast. Or something. The point is, moving from one kind of place to another is a culture shock. First thing to do is find out how to get rid of your garbage. It's not the same everywhere.

We're closed-garage people.

During my time here in outer suburbia, I have made a study of the natives, and I have come to realize that family tribes come in two varieties: open-garage people and closed-garage people.

Open-garage people are, as the name suggests, people who leave the garage door open all the time. Doesn't matter what the weather is; doesn't matter if the garage is neat as a pin or stuffed to the rafters like a hoarder's nightmare; doesn't matter if the garage is a tricked-out workshop or just a covered parking spot. That door stays open. It only gets closed at night -- maybe.

On the other hand, closed-garage people keep their garage doors shut as much as possible. Some may park in the driveway and never open the garage. Are there dead bodies stacked up in there? Who knows? Some of them will park in the garage and shut the door fast, like they're ashamed. Some are so ashamed they may try to back out of the garage without opening the door; this never ends well.

Are they afraid of having things stolen? An invasion of wild animals? Is this a survival instinct, indicating a stronger such instinct in these groups than in open-garage groups? Possibly. Maybe the remote opener is just busted.

Pictured: Closed-garage people.

It would be simple to make the deduction that open-garage people leave the door up for easy access to the house, if that's the primary way in and out. I have observed that that is not necessarily the case. Families that use their back decks constantly, park on the driveway, go in and out the front door to get to the car, and have a keypad entrance to open the garage if needed, still leave the garage door open all day. Why? Well, I have yet to penetrate the origins of this behavior.

Closed-garage people, in contrast, will leave that door shut as much as they can, even when it's a major inconvenience to have it closed. That's just how they roll... or don't, if they're parked inside.

Both types of people can annoy their neighbors, because being annoyed by each other is what neighbors do, but I suspect the open-garage people are more vexatious to closed-garage people than vice-versa. Open-garage people can pop out at any second like a Whac-a-Mole, usually when Mr. Closed is hoping for some peace and quiet or trying to get his dog to pee. Some of the open-doorers have garages so full of crap that leaving the door up lowers property values. Closed-garage people may seem unfriendly or standoffish, but that's passively rather than aggressively annoying.

My final observation is that, like morning people and night people marrying each other, open-garage people and closed-garage people invariably find themselves living next to each other. In the former case, I still follow my Saber-Tooth Tiger Survival Theory, which states that morning people and night people are evolutionarily suited to get married so that someone will always be alert in case a saber-tooth tiger wanders into camp. But I can't figure out why open/closed-garage people wind up in proximity.

I'm working on a Survival Theory of the Distribution of Annoyance, but I'm still gathering field data. If you have access to a huge pile of grant money, please get in touch c/o this blog. Thank you.

Out where the suburbs end.

Recently I had to drive alone out of state, and on the way back I took the side roads instead of the highway. It was hot, but a beautiful day for driving. Everything was green. The crops were coming along fine in the farms I passed. Small town schools were closed, hibernating in the hot sun. Cows were just hanging around, doing their thing. Not too many other cars about. Once in a while I would come to a stop sign or traffic light, and we might have a total jam -- two cars in front of me. They would go their way, I mine, and happy travels to you.

I love it.

Sometimes when I'm tooling along, looking at the high-numbered houses on the low-numbered roads, I can almost touch that sense of longing that C.S. Lewis talked about, mostly in his autobiography Surprised by Joy, and also in The Weight of Glory:

the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name.

In my case this longing could easily be mistaken for nostalgia, for there are elements of nostalgia present in these trips. You see houses that time has forgotten -- neat and in good repair, for if time had remembered them they would have been ravaged -- but no one has ever said, "This is so 1960s. Tear it down and put up something modern." You can see houses in rows that each reflect the different decade in which it was built, going back up to a hundred years, each one in fine shape. Some look like the houses of my childhood, some of styles that came later. So I do get a twinge for those houses of my youth, it's true.

But nostalgia alone can't strike me this way. There is no Golden Age for me, as I have never had a period of my life that was not full of fear or loss or disappointment, and I'm too honest to think there ever had been. I miss the eighties, but I was young then, and everyone misses youth -- but I thought for sure we were going to have World War III (all the smart people said so).

Nostalgia can be sweet, but is not enough to cause the feeling I describe. And for the record, I hated long country drives when I was a kid. BOOORRR....RING. So I'm not harking back to a fondness for those.

It's not a time, but timelessness, that opens me up to Lewisian feelings on these trips. As in the Lewis quote above, it's extraordinarily hard to convey this feeling to others, but you know it if you feel it. To Lewis, who had experienced it in childhood and then walked a long road through paganism and atheism, it came to mean that desire for a home we have never really known, the place we really belong that is no place in this lesser world. It was a scent from a feast of things better than you could ever eat, a scent that was itself better than anything you could consume on earth. For him it was a sign that we are not in our real homes in this world, but that we have hope we will get there someday.

Lawn beasties.

On my strolls about suburbia with Tralfaz the Enormous Dog, I often see things that interest or surprise me. This surprised me:

I had to do a double-take. At first glance it didn't register because I had grown up in the city, where concrete deer were a commonplace on many of the postage-stamp lawns. Up in this area you never see them -- not even in the garden center -- because we have no need for them. We have actual deer, and plenty of them, wrecking gardens and ruining shrubs and running out in front of cars and crapping all over the place. When you have the real thing you usually have little desire to put up a phony representation, as in some fit of nostalgia. How can we miss them when they won't go away?

I wrote about other lawn pals almost exactly a year ago, gnomes and Mother Mary specifically. Of course there are toadstools and huge toads, too, and birdbaths, and St. Francis has become very popular, often among people who would have rejected the actual St. Francis and everything he stood for and 99% of everything he believed in.

Then there are lawn jockeys, about which I'll leave the reporting to our friends at Wikipedia, who seem to have been quite thorough. It's weird which topics Wikipedia covers well and in depth, as I've noted elsewhere.

But as I said at the beginning, most lawn statuary represents things you don't see normally -- comical figures like zombie cavalier jockeys, for example, as well as odd animals and cartoonish gnomes. (If you've been seeing Mary or St. Francis around in person, alert your local clergy.) So why the deer statue? Well, a lot of people around here have relocated from the city, self included, and I'd guess this little statue probably moved from a tiny yard in the Bronx to a nice big yard in the burbs. At least it's one deer that's not going to run out in front of my car.

Secret installations.

We know that the suburbs are full of secret spy stuff. Oh, yeah, we do.

After all, when you're planning your secret installation, whether for the CIA, U.N.C.L.E., Dr. No, the FBI, CONTROL, SPECTRE, the Слу́жба вне́шней разве́дки, SMERSH, Chinese Ministry of State Security, KAOS, or anyone else, you want to be out of town so no one sees you digging this big hole in the ground, but you don't want to be so far in the countryside that it takes your top agents eight hours just to drive their sports cars there. You want the suburbs, where there's not much going on, someone's always building something, and people schlep from there into town every day. 

Things are quiet in the 'burbs, and there's tons of nondescript wilderness around to build in. 

Blah, wilderness.

Another advantage is that everyone drives in the suburbs, so no one will come across the secret entrance to your lair.

No one... but the DOG-WALKING GUY!

(Me, that is.)

Secret entrance hatch.

I was rather surprised that they didn't even bother to put any signs around the hatch, like "KEEP OUT" or "HIGH VOLTAGE" or "NOTHING TO SEE HERE" or "PERFECTLY ORDINARY CIVILIAN HATCH HERE." Don't they know how suspicious things are when there's no signs?

I'm hoping it's CIA; at least they'll be on our side. Not evildoers like SPECTRE or the NSA or the IRS. I totally would expect the IRS to have secret headquarters where they bury incriminating hard drives.

But I don't know who it is. Not that they aren't clever, despite their lack of signs. I saw a big tank truck with "markings" from the county "sewer department" running "hoses" down the hatch. Yeah, right. Maybe delivering stolen gold through those hoses. Or maybe delivering SECRETS!

So the takeaway now is that you need to be alert to these kinds of installations in your neighborhood. There's plenty of Web sites for UFO sightings; bah! We need to start monitoring secret installation locations. Maybe if we can mark them, we'll figure out what they're up to. Pay especial attention if your suburb has features that are particularly attractive to secret lairs, like abandoned mine shafts, or volcanoes. Especially volcanoes.

We'll get to the bottom of this. The truth is down there.

Tralfaz the spy.

I live on a quiet street, or at least I used to think so. Then I got a dog. Now every night it seems we are living in Grand Central Station.

Here's a typical breakdown of a trip outside. Imagine, if you will, that it is the coldest night of the winter. Not too hard for me to imagine; we've had about five coldest nights of the winter so far. ("This is the coldest night of the winter!" Two days later: "God! That's even colder!" A week after: "Damn it to hell, this is the coldest night EVER!" etc.) Now, commence with odd pacing and whining. From the dog, not me. My whining comes later.

Mrs. K: Honey, he needs to go out. Can you take him?

Me: Okay, sure. (*dramatic sigh*) Come on, Tralfaz.

(Tralfaz, who cannot be trusted out in the fenceless yard by himself, is thrilled for the chance to go out, even though it's become so cold we're now measuring temperature in Kelvins.)

Me: Okay, Tralfaz, go potty.

(Suddenly the sedan belonging to the Athleticson Family comes tearing down the block. Tralfaz loses his train of thought, despite the fact that two minutes ago his bladder was going to go off like an IED. The car whips into the driveway and jerks to a halt in front of the garage. The door opens and Mr. Athleticson can be heard yapping into his cell.)

Mr. A: Good. Good. See that you call them in the morning. Don't tell him about the upgrades yet.

(Tralfaz stands at attention. Mr. A continues to yap up the driveway to his mailbox. Tralfaz looks like he's frozen solid now, except his large nostrils open and shut, open and shut. Possibly he's determining what Mr. A had for lunch seven hours ago. I can no longer with any great accuracy feel my own fingers.)

Me: Come on, Fazzy, get the lead out.

(Mr. A finally gets back in his car and the garage door opens. Tralfaz watches, still not moving a muscle, as the car glides in. Only once the garage door has shut completely does the dog move again.)

Me: Thank you for alertness in protecting us against the menace of the neighbors. Now pee, damn it.

(Tralfaz wanders off the path into the snow. Sniff. Sniff. My feet are going numb. Tralfaz starts eating a chunk of ice.)

Me: Focus, damn it!

(Tralfaz finishes his refreshing ice and remembers that he came out to empty his bladder, which by now must be turning his eyeballs yellow. He manages one pace before another sound his heard. This is the minivan belonging to the Destractiones Family three houses up. No member of the Destractiones can do anything quietly. They floss loudly. The minivan grinds to a halt and so does Tralfaz. He watches. The doors fly open and the sound of teenagers whining pierces the night. Tralfaz sits down on the ice and settles in. This could be good.)

Me: Not now, Gladys Kravitz. Get back to work.

Male teen: --left it out and then they FORGOT it!

Female teen: --think of anything so stupid--

Mrs. Destractiones: (unintelligible warnings and directions)

(A cold gust of wind from the Ninth Circle of Hell sweeps over suburbia.)

Me: Gah!!!!

(Young Distractiones male is instructed to bring trash can up to the curb; does so, singing, as loudly as he can, while the others slowly make their way indoors, bickering. Tralfaz watches, rapt: Will the male actually finish his mission and get to the front door first? Could be a dead heat, which would be the only heat about in the neighborhood.)

Me: Come on, Tralfaz! Get off the stick!


(Distractiones Family huddles inside, the boy a disappointing third. After the door closes and the dog slowly becomes convinced that it will not reopen, he rises to his feet.)

Me: Last chance, Tralfaz. POTTY! (Feeling like an ass for barking "POTTY!" like a Nazi sergeant in a war picture. "SCHNELL! SCHNELL!")

(The pickup truck belonging to Bat Fastird a couple of doors down is suddenly seen coming along the street.)

Me: INSIDE. NOW.

(Dog is dragged inside. Five minutes later his whining will result in his return outside. Which is right about the time the Athleticson Family minivan, Mrs. Fastird's hatchback, a cop car, two guys racing each other up the block, a miscellaneous SUV, a clown car, and a frigging brass band all get set to come down my street. I start plotting a move to northernmost Alaska. It would be quieter and it couldn't be much colder.)

Urbia.

I never lived in the part of New York with tall buildings and famous stores, penthouse apartments and Broadway shows,  nannies running babies around and hot and cold running taxicabs. Or the part of New York with funky artists' hangouts and little old shops and great bookstores. The kind of places they shoot TV shows and movies in (or at least some establishing shots while the rest is filmed in Toronto). Most people within the five boroughs don't live anywhere like those places. 

The maintenance fee alone is more than your mortgage, and if you don't tip the doorman a pile your life will be hell.

Most live in small apartment buildings, clustered houses, or dumpy housing projects.

One of the nicer dumpy ones.

I've mostly encountered four types of people who live in New York: Those who can do math and those who can't. No, I mean, I've known people like me who were born in the city and know it's not that big a deal, people who come from other places with big dreams who have a lot of money and connections from family or colleges, people who come from other places with big dreams who have nothing and barely hold on to that, and people who were born in New York with a lot of money and connections who talk a game of charity and live with a hand clutched on every throat they can reach.

I don't think it's generally true that in America the rich are always getting richer while the poor are getting poorer. For one thing, poor has a cellar -- nothing -- while rich is unlimited, so anytime rich people are getting richer there will be growing income disparity (as Kevin Williamson has pointed out). I think if it is true, it's true in Manhattan and places like that, where the rich have made rules for decades that have chased the middle class out. No one cared much when the Ronzoni pasta or Domino Sugar factories closed down, but those were places where good middle-class livings were made, not miserable food sweatshops with impoverished urchins working nine days a week. What was the middle class supposed to do, live on the dole? Like those lunch pail-toting slobs should have some pride?

Out in suburbia the middle class can roam free and breathe easier. I don't miss living within the five boroughs at all.