Junk

Driving into work this morning, I started to informally survey the lawn signs, this being an election year where the office of the President and all of the congressional seats are up for grabs, with local legislative representatives also seeking votes. "The Season" in and of itself won't really get started until closer to Labor Day, because that's how we always do it. Between now and then we've got the kids finishing up the school year (what? Oh you packed your brood off to a boarding school in Switzerland? Isn't that special? Okay-some of us have kids finishing up the school year), there's the arrangements at work for scheduling and taking of summer vacation, all the planning that goes into that, the vacation itself and then the return home and back to the routines. The next thing you know the kid's are on their way back to school (what kind of a school has Heidi for a mascot? Oh yeah, I forgot) and we settle back in and it's practically Fall and the elections are at our doorstep.

It's possible we do more research on buying a car than we do on picking a President. I asked a woman the other day, 'how you gonna vote on election day?' She said she's gonna go for the man with the nicest tie." I guess when you don't know where you're going any road will get you there, and is it just me but as we travel along this well-intentioned route, is it getting warmer? I'm going to start wearing a lighter jacket, that's for sure.

As for the elections and lawn signs, the ones I counted this morning (and there are at least five different ways I can travel to work, so this is a snapshot from just one) that I suspect will make the most difference to our region have little to do with a candidate or a party. I'm talking about the forest of "For Sale" signs that have sprouted like toadstools after a rain shower. They dot every neighborhood and are on every street, sometimes on adjacent properties.

I've read about the sub-prime bubble bursting and the credit crisis and the For Sale signs serve as 'illustrative aid' for those stories, but they, are simultaneously, so much more. Like their commercial companions, the empty storefronts across and throughout New England, the For Sale signs signal the death of a dream and are a headstone for that dream. "Main Street's white-washed windows and vacant stores/seems like there ain't nobody that wants to come down here no more." It's been an article of faith since the Founding of the Republic that each generation leaves its successors in a little better, a little more comfortable, position, than it inherited from its parents.

Somewhere the Great American Dream Machine jumped the tracks and it looks like that 'winning streak' may be coming to an end. The sound of hope disappearing seems like that of cardboard boxes being filled up and sealed, of moving vans pulling away from the curb, of yard sales where the entire lawn is covered in cast-off possessions no longer a part of the Great Move, and of neighbors we used to see every day not being seen anymore. This is, I've been told, by someone who works in real estate, a buyer's market because of the variety of offerings and range of values. Is that consoling to those who are selling? I don't know.

My parents owned every home I lived in growing up. They didn't buy any of them, I suspect, to sell them later-they were homes not houses in which to live for now. And when I look at the For Sale signs in my neighborhood, I have to wonder 'was it something I said?' (because I talk so much and so loud and make so little sense) or something we all did (or failed to do). When you put a price tag on your dream and jab the spikes into the lawn, what does your heart do every time you pull into the driveway and see the For Sale sign. "Buy! Buy! Says the sign in the shop window. Why? Why? Says the junk in the yard."
-bill kenny