There Goes The Neighborhood

My childhood home, until I got married. Now, it's called a "Bungalow" or "Cottage", which justifies the high prices they get for them.

We went to Little Rock, for the first time in a long time, a couple of weeks ago. We were driving around, seeing what changes had been made since the last time we were there, and decided to drive through my old neighborhood in Pulaski Heights.

As we drove through, I got to thinking about how wide these streets used to seem when I was a child, and how far apart the houses seemed to be, and how big the yards.

I was five years old when we moved into the house. It was a new neighborhood, with few houses and lots of pine trees. In fact, friends of my parents couldn't believe we were moving "way out in the Heights". Now, it seems like almost the center of town. And the wide streets I saw through the eyes of my childhood are actually pretty narrow. The houses are close together, and they are much smaller than I remember.

My old house looks about the same, from the front,with a few cosmetic changes, such as a new front porch and different landscaping. There used to be a huge evergreen tree in the middle of the yard, which blocked most of the view of one side of the house. We got several pictures, one of the side, which shows an addition that someone built on the back of the house, behind where my bedroom was. Then, on the other side, we looked down the driveway, expecting to see the same detached garage that was there for so long. To our surprise, there was what appeared to be a guest house (or mother-in-law's quarters), instead of the garage.

I would love to see the house on the inside, but couldn't figure out a polite way to knock on the door and ask for a tour without causing the owner to call the police. Maybe some day, I'll drive down that street and there will be a for sale sign in front. Then, I can get the Realtor to show me the house.

We drove around the rest of the neighborhood and I was appalled to se the McMansions that have replaced a lot of the smaller houses, on those tiny lots. It is very depressing to see what is being done there. The big houses look ridiculous, and the smaller, original houses seem to be cowering next to them. It used to be such a quaint, quiet neighborhood, and now it has been raped by the yuppies and their hunger for ostentation, the right address, the right image. Someone used the term, "conspicuous consumption", and I think that fits the situation perfectly.

I'm not opposed to change, but instead of building those big, honking estates that take every inch of the lot, leaving no room for trees, yards or any other form of landscaping, why didn't they just buy a nice big lot in some area designed for those huge monstrosities?

It makes me sad and, I just realized, I'm also angry.