Neighbors

My street is two blocks long and ends in a cul-de-sac. Most of the houses on my street were built between 1965-1970. There are a few people who are original owners of their homes. We've been in our home for 18 years now. It's nothing fancy but it suits our purposes. Our neighbors include a professor at the University of Minnesota, a pharmacist, a mail carrier and a general contractor. One of the houses on our street appears to be in foreclosure; the family that has lived there has had financial difficulty and some marital instability. While we are aware of the issues, we don't say much about it. We wave at each other when we drive through the neighborhood, but we don't talk a lot. There are a few younger kids who ride scooters in the cul-de-sac, but for the most part it's a quiet street where the only predictable sound is a lawn mower or a snow thrower, depending on the season. It's a stable place.

There are dozens of similar streets in New Brighton, and probably thousands in the Twin Cities metropolitan area. New Brighton rarely gets in the news much and we prefer it that way. There's an ongoing dispute about chicken farming, and some folks on the other end of town got into a dispute about feeding deer that led to a murder last year, but for the most part very little happens here. We go about our business and not much changes.

Should it change? Depends on who you ask. More to come.