The "defectives"

To get to our place (paradise!), you have to go over the railroad tracks and wend your way through rural America. You'll see plenty of trailers and small block homes, citrus groves and yards of chickens. For the most part these places are house proud and neat.

But there is one place that fascinates me every time I pass it. It is so politically incorrect, but we call the people who live there "the defectives". I don't know them and I have never spoken to any of them. The many children who spill out of the yard and into the road never fail to give any passerby the finger. They don't return our neighborly waves. There is a man in a wheel chair who sits under his confederate flag. I had thought he might be a Viet Nam vet, but I find out he became disabled as a result of a drunken driver event. He is covered with tattoos.

The house is a small wooden shack and in front is an amazing array of derelict plastic toys, broken bikes, trash, pit pulls chained to a post, and old cars with their hoods up, exploding automotive innards. Usually there is a fire burning in the beaten earth yard. Right on the dirt road is a dysfunctional play set placed in the tall shrubs. Whatever the hour, day, night, morning or evening, a posse of young adults lounge there.

I could completely bypass this house by going the other way, straight up Puckett Road to the main paved road into town. But usually, I do not because I am interested in the lives of these people and I am a voyeur I suppose. I am expecting something to happen. Last week, it did. One of them tried to shoot someone else. This person was arrested and no one was actually shot. Of course the obvious thing here at this place must be something to do with the manufacture or sale of drugs.

But now, the posse still sits there at all hours, the kids come and go (looks like a couple of them go to school, and they look like any kids on their way to the bus with their backpacks.) All summer I worried about all those disheveled people without a/c, and the kids out in the road.

On my slow way past this house (no way am I going to run over a child!) I imagine stopping and talking to them, maybe offering them some vegetables and fruit from our place. I have imagined inviting the kids to come for a swim in our pool. But I don't.

Such a vast chasm in our country between the rich and the poor. I see it every day and feel powerless.