This Old House

We have serious water pressure in this house. The pressure finally busted through the cheap plastic sink hose sprayer. We JUST replaced it in August. The original owners of this house were millionaires and ran various businesses and owned lots of property. They were the neighborhood landlords to all the buildings in every direction. They OWNED the neighborhood and had connections. I imagine that they somehow arranged to have the best water pressure in the neighborhood.

We are 28 years in this house and what was once an absentee-landlord neighborhood is now family-owned and occupied. It's quite a turnaround. My neighbor James the barber (a former construction worker) actually just built a brand-new home behind his current house, around the corner on the dead end. He loves it here so much. His mom will stay in the original house. "I'll look after her!" I said. We have some seriously COLORFUL characters. Like the "bathrobe lady" who was a tenant across the street, she bought the house a couple doors up the street. We love her. We call her the bathrobe lady because when she was renting the ground floor apartment she would stand on the sidewalk in her red velvet bathrobe and wave her phone around while smoking and talking very loud! Now she talks very loud on the phone from her 2nd floor porch. Her son lives below her. A Senegalese family bought the HAPPY HOUSE carpenter-style on the corner. They are lovely too. The neighborhood is stable after 30 years. 

When I first moved in a 9 year old girl across the street caught her leg through the railing of the porch. She fell and twisted her leg and broke it. I heard screaming and called 911. Nobody had called except me. What if I hadn't been home? Now when there's a problem everyone jumps out onto the sidewalk and looks out from their porches to help. AMEN to progress. AMEN to family owned, owner-occupied property.