The House On The Far Side of The Town

On the far side of the town at the edge of the woods where the trees grew most dense was a house that was withered and old. It was falling to pieces and was held together just as well as the belt loop of a man who’d indulged far too much in his youth-it burst at the seams. But this house was not abandoned. No it certainly was not abandoned. During the humid summers newlywed rabbit lovers thumped away beneath the back porch steps as they built nests to welcome their raspberry nosed kits. At the turn of the season a dreadful winter cold ravaged these parts and it was rats, bats, barn owls and the occasional solo remnants of a southbound migration which took shelter in the broken canopies of the attic and the inside shelves of the closets and cupboards.

The critters didn’t have much to say about the house and likewise the house hadn’t much to say to them apart from the occasional groan when the wind hit it the wrong way. They worked in the way most things in nature did and it was a good mutually beneficial relationship.

But the presence of the house stretched beyond it’s chewed out walls and broken windows. It took up space in the hushed whispers of disdained towns folk as they tisked and sucked their teeth at “the sore eye of a great American town.” Most of this came from the folks in the nicer houses on Page Mill Road-but from their perch up on the hill everything always looked like a sore eye. Of course there were certainly some individuals who agreed but something about admitting it felt like confessing to something more and so they bit their tongue. That is until the third Saturday of every month. On these days they’d gather themselves up from their hill homes or their rural farms and pile into the courthouse on Labrea and Tomson. There they’d convene and once again convince themselves that they’d figure out once and for all just what to do with that darn house.

They called another one of these congregations on a Saturday afternoon that was far to hot for conversating. It was clear by the scrunched up faces of the folks in the building that everyone was thinking the same thing. The judge glared at them and banged his gravel though there really wasn’t any need to.

“Now listen up folks,”He said. “This here house has been an issue for far too long. We’ve mused over it till the cows done come home and left again. Ain’t no reason for lingering on this conversation much longer. Anyone got a proposition that’s worth a damn?”

It was Mark Strathmore that took up the stand first. Mark owned a mini golf course in the Page Mill division. It was a fancy joint that was far too grand for a small town like theirs-almost obscenely so. But the hill folk and out of townees loved it and so it thrived and lined his pockets with enough cash for him to confidently stand there and speak. As it turned out the only thing Mark liked more than his clubs and his small windmills was the sound of his own voice. He rambled on thereabout a “proper” golf course and providing jobs for the people. His proposition of using up the land for a large scale country club fell on ready ears as the side of the room with the Page Millers nodded along encouragingly. They glanced every now and then at the other side of the room which refused to encourage the verbose manifesto. That side was made up of the farmers and industrial workers of the state. Most of whom had never stepped a foot on a golf course and swore up and down on their boots and the graves of their fathers-past that they’d shit boulders before the day came. These country folk had no need for such things and it was their loud and resounding heckling that brought Mr. Strathmore off his high podium and down down the side of the stage to begrudgingly settle himself among the crowd of commoners.

Helen from the deli went up next. She suggested that it be turned into a historical site. A nice idea but she hadn’t put much though into it. When the new schoolteacher who’d transferred from a college up north threw around words like “physical integrity” and “historical significance” Helen; never one who liked to be challenged, took this as a personal upfront and fired back with a quip about the “structural integrity” of her head and swore to knock it clear off. That didn’t go down too well and she was ushered off the stage as the school teacher nervously wrung her handkerchief. She had much to learn.

It went on like this for several hours. They bounced ideas off one another soon yelling over one another to be heard. Laundromats and burger kings, barber shops, hunting lodges and a movie theater like the one in the Big Apple that made you feel like like a king. Their voices rose higher and higher and the pounding of a mallet was swallowed in the noise.

While the judge struggled to maintain order in his court out there on the far side of the town at the edge of the woods where the trees grew most dense the cabin went up in flames.