Fuck Ratchett and Her HOA

OK, so I live in a neighborhood with a Homeowner’s Association. Granted, not the best choice for a non-conformist such as myself, but a passable choice for a passable neighborhood. To the south, lives a very cool younger couple, who I quite like and who, upon reading this rant, may never accept my FaceBook friend invitation. As for the rest of the neighborhood, well, since I’m already on my soapbox…

Tonight I’m pondering the unthinkable. My neighbor – we’ll just call her “Ms. Ratchet” - to the north, my next door neighbor, is a miserable sack of a woman, 60 going on 100, she plods the neighborhood hour, after insufferable hour, barking dog in tow, monitoring the comings and goings of all around her, ever ready to strike up a conversation with anyone willing to suffer the re-telling of her hip replacement surgery in graphic detail. I heard it once, last summer, when I had the misfortune of sharing a waiting room at a local physical therapist office (sports injury for me – 2 treatments and Bob’s your uncle, I was done). But I digress.

Today I got a call from the HOA to advise me of a pending formal letter of complaint about my dogs. Both are rescues, Levon, the deaf one, was a tragic case when I got him and his “issues” still haunt his every waking moment. Stella, the puppy, is Levon’s dog, and has been his companion and sense of self-confidence ever since I took her in last April. Apparently, though, the dogs bark. They bark when they play, they bark when they’re happy, they bark when I pull into the driveway because in their world, nothing compares to the first 10 minutes when I get home and we three run like banshees around the back yard. They bark because they love life, and I bark back, because I love them. At the moment, big Levon is sleeping on the sofa next to me. He’s on his back, with his hind feet against my left side, snoring through the sleep of the truly righteous and just. Two years ago I got him as a pup after some douche-bag threw him through a plate glass window into a local pet store. He’s in a much better place now, I think.

The downside? My kids bark in the morning when old Ratchet wants to sleep. Forget for a moment that her dog barks non stop, forget for a moment that I’ve actually seen Ratchet walking along the outside of the 6 foot fence around my back yard, peering through the slats like some Peeping Tom that should register with the local PD, and forget for a moment that the big deaf traumatized dog actually barks at her when she skulks, Ratchet has the nerve to complain to the HOA. Levon barks because Stella plays with him, he barks because she loves him, he barks because in her company he finally is learning the courage to trust humans once again. I love to hear him bark; Ratchet, on the other hand, can sleep through her barking mutt at the window every morning, but not Levon barking from 50 feet away. OK, first – fuck her and the stick she limped in on. Yeah, I said it. And just once more for emphasis: "FUCK HER AND THE STICK SHE LIMPED IN ON." But I still have to contend with the HOA.

As it happens, my particular HOA is controlled by a whole group of other “Ratchets” – all in their 60’s, 70’s and beyond – who’ve transplanted their snow beaten asses from some useless, forgettable hamlet north of the Mason-Dixon, bent on combining their social security checks with just enough alchemy to forge a few golden years “down south” from the pustulous quicksilver that was their lives before retirement. The standing joke among local southerners: “Why are there so many Jersey transplants in NC? It’s as far as a Ford Taurus can go on 20 gallons of gas.” Yeah I said that too.

So, what the hell is it with my neighbors? It can’t possibly be just their age(s). Hell, my Mom died this year at 92, my dad is 83, they love animals, treat everyone well, and even now, both of them are far cooler than I ever could hope to be. It’s can’t be the local “Yankee” heritage either, for that matter. Mom and Dad both were from Jersey, and show no similar signs of social de-compensation. No, I blame the HOA. Enabled by statute in 1967 (I was in the second grade), the North Carolina legislature chose to enable the egocentric whims of those who actually value living among others such as themselves, to regulate themselves within the narrowly proscribed geographic constraints of what have come to be known as “subdivisions.” Translation: “A-holes of a feather, flock together.” And, as has come to pass over the past 42 years, the HOA has manifest itself less as a champion of the common good and more as a shared spine for those too cowardly to speak their addled minds to their neighbors.

So what now? Do I fight “the Man?” Drag out the lawyer-asshole I try so hard to keep in check and pound them thin? Couldn’t hurt? I’d feel better and while my elders might advise to make nice with the neighbors, in my business we’re not expected to make a lot of friends, being adversarial and all, and for us, any press is always good press. Hell, 6 months from now, no one will remember why I went to war with the HOA, or just what war we fought. As quickly as people will forget the name “HOA, Defendant(s),” they will remember me and, in truth, someone who’s heard of the case will hire me and I’ll probably make money off the effort.

Again, I ask: “So what now?” It’s no secret that I look down my nose at the new Union Army soiling my sacred birthplace. I admit this freely, and while I welcome all to my table, so to speak, I do make mental allowance for diners who would arrive wearing the occasional dirty wife-beater and sweatpants ensemble. So, no, I don’t fight the man, yet. I quiet my rage, still my wrath and steel myself for the day when I may have to say goodbye to my sweet girl Stella. I am angry, indignant and vengeful, but mostly I am heartbroken that I may have to break the sacred promise I made when I rescued Stella in favor of placating the gaseous bag of vitriol next door. Nope, I was wrong just now. "Heartbroken" doesn't begin to describe it.

Well, I’ve finished my glass of Jamesons and this rant as well. I think I’ll take the kids out for a walk and we all may pee in her yard. Good night Ratchet.

My Brush With Stupid

So, this afternoon I went to the grocery, having spent a day on the water I was both too tired and too lazy to cook dinner. We were tired, burned, sandy, damp and salt was crusting on my hat. I pulled in to a parking space near the front, just next to a brand-spanking new white Range Rover into which a woman, younger than me (about 40-sh?), but far portlier and aging quickly, was loading bags of groceries.

Now ya’ll know the type, all dressed to the nines in cheap costume jewelry and the “resort wear” that her friends goaded her to buy after eight Mimosa’s and a “girl’s day out.” I’m sure she never gave a thought to the idea that a Harris Teeter grocery store near the beach never, never qualifies as a resort.  Neither, I’m sure, did she give a thought to the idea that her floppy straw hat looked less like an accessory and more like a bottle-cap holding back 200 pounds of banana-puddin’ pudge just aching to bust out of her red, yellow and green stretch Capri pants.   Goodness, I think were she to fall to her side, neither her hat, nor her kitten-heel slides would even touch the ground.  But hey, I was wearing a dirty t-shirt and salty board shorts – not quite the fashion statement either.

As I pulled into my parking place, I noticed that one of her bags, once chock-a-block full of frozen shrimp, frozen crab legs and other “delicacies” had yielded to the weight of its contents and spilled out on to the ground. As I got out, I looked at her and without so much as a courtesy, she directed me: “Help me with these.” Had her Brooklyn slur not belied her heritage I would have sworn she were raised somewhere south of the Mason and was, thus, otherwise accustomed to sipping Juleps and ordering yard boys about.

(Now, at this point, my “truer” Southern bretheren would doubtless go off on a “Yankee-this, Yankee-that” rant, but not me.  It’s not that I’m above the fracas mind you, yeah we lost the War Against Northern Aggression, no, we’re probably never going to rise to power again – we’d rather just take your money – but ya’ll are never gonna be one of us.  No, I just repeat my mantra:  “Yank-tard, Yank-tard, Yank-tard.”)

“What the heck, I’ll be her porch monkey, just this once.” I stepped in to help her – she backed up to give me access to her frozen mess – and as I was loading bags of frozen shit into the back of her Rover, she got on the cellie. “I’m running late. My bags (only one, I swear) broke and ‘a boy’ is loading them for me.”

I’ll take the “boy” compliment any day – I’m, 50, so I figure I’m about 10 years older than Ms. Squishy.

“Not on the leather honey.” Apparently 5 lbs of frozen shrimp goes on the carpet.

“WOW, you really like your seafood.” I observed… “Yeah, my husband is having a Bar-b-que for his golf group and the ‘wives’ are doing the cooking.” God almighty, bless her heart and “Honey, could you get me and the boys another round of beers? (Domestic – I saw them).

To me: “You look like a local boy (I'm still a boy I guess), where do you get your seafood?”

“From the ocean. Ma’am, we live at the beach, I buy locally.”  Snarky, yes it was, but being just “a boy” I felt obliged.

“Oh God, the beach is just dirty, and those people…”

OK, at this point I had stopped listening – wouldn’t you? And as she turned to leave I noticed that she was about to push her shopping cart into the parking lot, rather than returning it and I couldn’t help myself.

To her: “Here Honey, let me take that for you – save you the trouble of pushing it into the middle of the street.”

To me: “(Gasp) You should try being a little less rude.”

To her: “You should try being a little less of a bitch.”

To me: “I’m going to tell my husband.”

To her: “Ma’am, I’m sure your husband knows.”

OK, so, this entire discourse took longer to write than transpire, and as I walked through the store, avoiding anything I could otherwise buy locally, it struck me” “Oh my God, I just crossed swords with the clueless and survived the day.”  And I ask:  "At that point does one become so?  How does it happen?  Maybe it involves some sort of head injury.  Maybe it's a psychological disorder.  Maybe it just "happens" when Brooklyn gives up her gems and summarily droop-kicks them to North Carolina?  Who fucking cares?

Were it that we all could just float through life, ignorant of our surroundings, ever focused on what to wear to the next Bar-b-que. Although, even if the same were possible, I like to think I’d choose otherwise. I like my life, love my career, honor my father and never forget how I was raised. Mom used to preach: “God protects fools and small children.” And with God on her side, I think my grocery babe had a fabulous Bar-b-que.

Adios. I’m off to clean the shrimp I bought this afternoon from some guy parked next to the beach highway, under a makeshift tent bearing a sign reading “SHRIMP HEAR.” A local “boy” no doubt, but the shrimp were still flicking a little as he filled the bags.

The"Other Shoe"

"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door."


And now that you're here...you're fucked!

George W. Bush will throw you in some dusty hole in Cuba, deny your basic human rights, disenfranchise you from your belief systems and leave it to the next “good” President - the one we have now - to clean up his fucking mess…  Welcome to America.

OK, so here’s the thing. I consider it unconscionable that we live in one of the most affluent countries on the planet, yet we allow our residents to starve to death in the streets or suffer the indignities of a health-care system that caters those healthy, wealthy and wise enough either to pay for services or not to need them at all. We imprison and torture people simply because we don’t understand their beliefs and we validate national leadership that condones the same by re-electing them in order that they can finish waterboarding those last few holdouts. (Did you know that Guantanamo Bay "enemy combatants" have better access to 24 / 7 health care than 50 Million starving Americans living in the greatest country on earth, just 90 miles to the north?).  


Now we're bagging Obama for providing health-care to "illegal" residents?  Fuck that.  Give it to them.  As no notable Republican I can identify is a "Native American," it seems to me the voices who disagree most vehemently with providing health care for "illegals" come from people whose descendants were very likely illegals themselves.  I know, right?  Now, forget for a moment that "they" herald from legal stock only because their forebears conquered the indigenous population, then legalized themselves.  Wait, don't forget that, after all, their otherwise faulty syllogism depends on the passage of time for it's legitimacy.  As a kid in grade school, I remember being teased for my unusual last name, by some or another kid who claimed to have family ties to the Mayfower (he was liar, as it turned out) and I asked my dad whether our family came over with the original settlers.  He replied by showing me photos of the castle in Sicily bearing our family name, built about a thousand years ago, he told me of how his parents came into the states through Ellis Island and then offered:  "They have family roots.  We have a legacy, and we really don't have much use for "New World" cultures."


Now I digress to the above point only to suggest that the values I hold so dear, the pride of caring for my fellow man and the love I hold for the values upon which my country was built, are those I learned from a man whose father and uncles live in a dirt floor shack in North Jersey, spoke no english when they arrived, and worked their asses off building the Brooklyn bridge (plus other / multiple jobs) just to feed their families.  Yet, they never knew a stranger and no matter how little they actually had, they took great care to give to others and great pride that their "families" included so many more people who actually were unrelated, than those to whom they had ties by blood.   It was only as an adult that I actually came to understand the depth of sacrifice my dad willingly made to give me the benefits of the education and opportunity I now enjoy and exploit.  My realization was blunt and shocking and I remain indelibly, and thankfully, bruised from its impact on me.

These days, though, over the wailing cries of all the "haves" in fear of losing what they have to the "have nots," as I look around at the multi-colored faces of the "have nots" and realize that I am indeed the new minority, I ask myself: “Who are we?” How did we come to treat our fellow man, like so much of yesterday’s garbage that we won't care for them because they got to the States after 1980, that we have walled-off an entire country to prevent "losing" our stuff to the same brown faces we eagerly hire to mow our lawnsand that we outlaw panhandling and re-orient city zoning ordinances to “move” those less fortunate to parts of town away from the view of Range Rover driving douche bags whose only problems are getting across town to meet other Range Rover driving douche bags for “mommy’s morning out” at Starbucks.

So many of us need so much. Our children can’t read, our friends and neighbors can’t buy food, and our parents can’t buy medicine. Yet so many of us have so much to spare. I recently ranted on a bit – predictable for me, I know – about my dissatisfaction with the “state of things” in our country. It was a quiet conversation, over a lunch table in a local dive bar.  When, as though moved by God on high, and this paunchy, beer-bloated dumbass, put down a chicken wing, waddled over to the table and told me: “If you don’t like America, you should leave it, commie.” Commie!  He called me a commie. Walking out the door, I shoved a dollar bill in a bucket by the cash register, raising money for some one who couldn’t afford to pay for a childhood cancer treatment and it occurred to me: “son a familia.” “We are family.”  (It seems Sister Sledge had it right all along, mother-fuckers).

And I guess this is where I meander ‘round to my point.  Ours is a country built on notions of freedom so compelling that the same inspired a bunch of home-spun, barefooted anarchists – a/k/a poor people who were just fed the fuck up with being shat upon by the Crown and who, if alive today, no doubt would have voted for President Obama – to wage war against what was, 250 years ago, the most formidable foe on the planet.  Eventually we snubbed King George III, claimed ourselves possessed of inherent natural rights including the right to revolution and declared:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

110 years later, when the hot copper chick debarked in New York harbor, rather than peeking up her skirt (you know what “they” used to say about French women), we graced her, and in turn ourselves, with a little Emma Lazarus (The New Colossus, for those with a ken for good poetry):

"Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch,
whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, 

and her name
Mother of Exiles.
From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. 'Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!'"

Fast forward 125 years, a blithering idiot named George W. Bush, who obtained from a noble and impressive family mind you – I met his father and mother once and found them both unforgettable – trammeled our theretofore noble legacy, wiped his ass with the constitution, walled off Mexico, threw Muslims in jail, let big energy run the country, invaded a sovereignty 12,000 miles away and lied about his motives for doing to, left us One Trillion Dollars in debt and we’re somehow supposed to feel safe?  Safe from what, exactly?   I’ll have to work harder for the rest of my life than my father ever did just to retire.  Safe?  Personally, I feel fucked.  And they who would have reelected Dub-Ya to a third term, those Range Rover driving douche bags who turn a blind eye to the needs of others in favor of that ever-elusive perfect “Double Decaf Mocha Latte” are now complaining louder than ever that our President, our mixed race, Muslim influenced, demonstrably brilliant beacon of light and promise,  actually gives a shit about the “other half.”  Fuck them.  Fuck them and the gas guzzling shit machines they rode in on.  Fuck ‘em, fuck ‘em, FUCK ‘EM.  

All of us are bro's.  The tempest-tossed homeless, the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of every teeming shore, are as much our brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, sons and daughters as are the Range Rovers (?). The man who called me a Commie is my brother too.  Granted, my brother (thrice removed) from the shallow end of our gene pool, but dammit, he’s my bro. Let’s give shit away to our extended family, consume less, give more? How hard can it really be?  I'm giving my shit to this guy.   He looks like a party on two feet doesn't he?  He's your brother too.

I think when we - and by this I mean the collective, not the royal, “we” - finally understand this one simple principle, “son a familia,” my how things will change. Let’s hope things change during our lifetimes.  And, in closing, to all those who would disagree:

C'est Fin!