The Long Way Home

There are times I find myself rushing from one place to another, not taking the time to look at the wonders the universe has placed all around me.  Even after six glorious months of not having a clock order my life since retirement,  I have not yet mastered the art of going slow.  But, every now and again I manage to slow myself enough to notice small things.  Ya know, small things like the end of civilization.

Our street stops at a fence which separates our subdivision from a cow pasture three houses away from ours.  The road is not a dead end, it just stops.  The pavement sort of trails off and a few feet of base course, the road underlayment, continues.  A couple of yards after the base course there is graded dirt which soon transitions to undisturbed grasses and then there's a fence which runs perpendicular to the road and encloses the cow pasture. 

I've been looking at that fence since we moved in and until today had no clue why my eyes continued to wander back to it.  I guess the end of civilization is like that.  It takes a while to figure out just what you're looking at because you've never seen it before.  Now, don't misunderstand; I have seen lots of dead end roads in my life, and some of them look just like this one.  They just sort of run out.  There's a difference, though, in this road and others that stopped short.  This road is civilized all the way to the end. 

If I were to go to our local planning and zoning people, I'm sure I would find the pasture was in the middle of getting rezoned when the money ran out.  In this small part of the world civilization has already come to an end, and the end came three doors down the street.  For sure, folks still come and go, and carry on with their lives as if nothing happened.  But it has.  There's no more money.

I thought about my newest find for awhile and then jumped into the Guzzler Deluxe.   Civilization also must have ended elsewhere and I was determined to find out.  It didn't take long, and I can report  the end we experienced, on our street, was a very orderly thing.  In most places, chaos ruled.  There are MANY subdivisions with completed houses dropped onto lots with nothing more than pipes and coils of electrical wires coming out of the ground on the lots to either side.  In several places, I traveled the length of a city block, past the pipes and wire emerging from the ground, before coming to a house sitting all by itself  - and the pipes and wires continued for a block past the house. 

Some of these houses were occupied and some were empty.  One enterprising guy has even put inexpensive fencing around the empty lots on both sides of his home and planted a lawn!  The only clue that he is squatting on the lots are the pipes and wires.  He'll probably get away with it until he dies - the money's gone and the developer is more than likely bankrupt.  I doubt the bank that owns it even knows where it is. 

Mostly I've been in a hurry and have driven on larger, main arteries in my travels to and from our home.  I've always taken the shorter, faster roads.  If I had even once taken a longer route, I would have seen the end of the world.  It's a pretty compelling reason for slowing down and taking the long way home.