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Our Daily Routine
Throughout most of the Summer we have been without a car here on week days, so my carefree days of trips to the parks and museum were ended. Everyday we took the only walk available to us—from home to the derelict Hong Kong Garden and back—twice: once in the morning and once in the evening, avoiding the unbelievable heat which often reached 100°F. Here is a plan of the route (the house is on the right, the restaurant at the left):
1. The thinner line represents a shortcut through the driveway of the neighboring house that is sometimes taken for variety; the small loop is the path up to the front porch. As you can see, ours is the third of three houses sheltered together by woods from the outside world—even that thin screen of shrubbery just above the house looks quite impenetrable from the ground. The following pictures were taken last July.
Anyone who actually wants to follow my detailed comments on 21 more photos in the series and follow the route in full can look here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/Anebo10/Walk
1. The thinner line represents a shortcut through the driveway of the neighboring house that is sometimes taken for variety; the small loop is the path up to the front porch. As you can see, ours is the third of three houses sheltered together by woods from the outside world—even that thin screen of shrubbery just above the house looks quite impenetrable from the ground. The following pictures were taken last July.
Anyone who actually wants to follow my detailed comments on 21 more photos in the series and follow the route in full can look here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/Anebo10/Walk
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It does get very green up here, but with the heat (and this past summer was particularly terrible) by August everything--the yard especially--starts to turn brown. The trees stay pretty green; I guess they're somewhat heat and drought resistant. The only reason my beloved flowers thrived was because of our diligent watering.
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The Wal Mart, as far as I'm concerned, if I'm within a 25-mile radius, is far too close. My God, what a freak show that place is.
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The rumor, though--or perhaps it's wishful thinking on my part--is that the abandoned restaurant is supposed to be torn down and some sort of strip mall put there instead. Which isn't much of an improvement, but at least somewhere to actually walk to for lunch or something.
A yard is nice with children because we can just send them out to play; we don't have to take them anywhere to play. And I like planting and gardening, so all in all we like it here.
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What sort of freakshow is walmart :-)
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I would imagine perhaps you've heard of Wal Mart though perhaps not--uh, experienced, I guess--the store. Wal Mart, first, has created the death of small town America and its Main Streets. When Wal Mart builds a store, expect all the little shops to close shortly thereafter. This is because Wal Mart is designed as a huge warehouse space in which one can buy anything, just about, including food--that would be a Supercenter (God, I cringe even to type this). In addition, the place sells everything much more cheaply than anyone else, and so, like most people who don't like to spend money they don't have to, I go there too. Being middle-class on the economic scale, we try to save where we can, but that means we must endure the freaks.
The most common group would be the ones who go there every day or every other day. It's an often overheard conversation I hear when I'm there. American shopping habits are different from those of Europe; we shop for necessities weekly or bi-weekly rather than daily or every few days. So this group of freaks, if you listen long enough, go there for entertainment. Usually, their grammar leaves much to be desired, too.
Inevitably, the clientele seems mostly to come from a Lovecraftian type of farm family: each member approaching 300 or even 400 poounds, their smiles suggesting novel structures not normally associated with the human palate, looking upon a display of bath towels without quite understanding what they are seeing. They favor buying beer (if you can call it that) by the case. They yell and curse at their children openly. You get the picture. Here in the States, people of that ilk are referred to as "white trash." And they love Wal Mart.
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Among many of the crackpot theories I have, one relates directly to the vast scale on which goods are bought and sold here. It's commonly known that Americans work more hours and take fewer vacations than anyone else in the Western world. Before the 1980's, a worker typically finished school, got a job, and stayed with that employer for all his or her working life. No more. There is no such thing as job security or loyalty between employer and employee anymore; it's all about profit margins. Your typical Wal Mart worker, therefore, makes very little money and even the mention of a worker's union in that company can get you sacked. Employee turnover is high, not just at Wal Mart but everywhere. So all in all, Americans have traded in worker's rights, job security, and longevity in their working lives for "Low, low prices every day" (Wal Mart's slogan).
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A lot of the small shops have been killed by the supermarkets or taken over by chains in the last 30 years. This is only obvious to someone of my age by looking at old photos of high streets in the 1960's and 70's. Some continue to prosper. My uncle still runs a greengrocer shop in Birmingham. Some of the small shops fill niches that supermarkets can't reach. Butcher shops especially seem to have survived in a bit of a timewarp.