He greeted me by name, although I didn't recall having been previously introduced. As it happened, I also knew his. When my wife and I were mulling over making an offer on the house, I googled the street name and got his identity, address and occupation.
He asked if I was from Philly. Apparently, he'd caught sight of me wheeling the trash to the curb while clad in a holey "Philadephia City Sports" tee shirt given to me by my sister, who does live in Philly.
The window of the study looks directly across the one-lot commons to his garage. I regularly see his family returning in their car, unloading groceries or whatever. I know he keeps the inside of his garage tidy.
It's possible he may have observed me stringing a Radio Shack wire antenna out the window, hoping to boost my shortwave reception. I'm a total dork.
We talked about babies, spouses, careers and sports. The conversation ended with an invitation to me and my wife to come over and watch the NFL season opener.
Where did I get the idea that suburbs are places of anonymity? Nothing could be farther from the truth. With nine families arranged in a semi-circle, it could hardly be more of an "eyes on the street" situation.
Many people would agree that the suburbs lack a certain...what?. The word "suburbia" itself is more often used connotatively than denotatively, as a shorthand for a nexus of attributes -- vacuity, boredom, terminal loneliness, spiritual paralysis, sloth, consumption, hollow-man-ness, "death-in-life"...the whole techno-capitalist demonology. It seems hard to map out the reasons logically, yet I trust this perception of the suburb as being valid, at least partially. Failing to articulate precisely why, I fall back on the old standard: it "lacks a sense of community."
The mystery deepens...
