Last night I was leaving to feed Katie Cat while her family was gone. There was a fire truck by our house. Again.
Living on the edge of a small town (in an area once left to black families) is not like living in the city, or even in the middle of town. Not that I didn't ever have any "emergency" situations in Southern California. Once I saw what I thought was a dead man on the landlord's lawn. But he was a dead-drunk teenager. And I had a police helicopter visit once when a guy the police was chasing left his sandals in my flowerpot and said I had invited him into my backyard. The police woke me up to get a statement.
But we still seem to get an unusual number of emegency vehicles out here. There was the brush fire (caused by a transformer explosion and drooping wires) before the houses next door were built. Firetrucks were at our house half the night. And there have been fires plus a smoldering roof a little further away, and several attempts at burning down a tiny abandoned church down the road. The last attempt was successful. Emergency vehicles stage at our house when investigating situations up or down the cross street, or near our fire hydrant in case of a big fire.
Our big old dog Sparky hates emergency vehicles after living with a violent man who had frequent police visits. But he is protective, and used to stand by the fence and bark sternly during services at the little church across the street, in an apparent determination to protect the congregation from their loudly amplified, excited pastor. A few years ago Sparky was sent running from the spot where he protected the congregation. Fire trucks scared brave Sparky into cowering silence as they responded during a Wednesday night service that got a little too spirited. Normally, the dogs all howl at emergency vehicles on nearby roads, headed out of town for the surprisingly frequent incidents which happen in the country: explosions, fires, people acting crazy out by a canal, downed power lines or car crashes (often solo) involving people who get reckless because they feel less restrained than they would in town.
And we seem to get peripherally involved in a lot of police and social services matters. A woman came running to the house one night from way down the street, through the goathead stickers (toritos), in bare feet, to call the police because her son had been beaten up. A mother descending into psychosis wanted to leave her little daughter with us because she thought ghosts were after her. We see kids who look like they are at risk wandering in or near the fields, and sometimes a kid will show up to use the phone. The police once mistakenly believed that I was the woman who threatened a neighbor because she thought there was an affair going on between the neighbor and her husband (after all, the neighbor had picked up the accuser's son for football practice while driving her own nephew and other boys to the practice - proof positive of an affair with the accuser's husband). An absentee landlady came here for help after her property was broken into.
Francisco once brought us a gun he had found in a woodpile, which turned out to have been used in a shooting. We got two detectives casing out the house before four officers responded to my report - they had been looking for that gun. It looked like one of those old pirate guns, but was a sawed-off shotgun with the butt altered to resemble a pistol grip.
Last night, it was just a bad case of dehydration. A woman was taken to the hospital. She's part of the black family next door, and I'm ashamed to say I don't even know how many people live there. I have talked to the woman before, but she seems reserved with me. The husband and wife both talk to David sometimes.
They seem more oriented to socializing with other blacks, though. The black guy up the street who always wears a cowboy hat stopped his truck and went to investigate when he saw the fire truck and ambulance. The older man who tools around in a motorized wheelchair stopped by. too. He told me that "Janice's daughter" had been taken to the hospital, like he expected me to know who "Janice" was. The man in the wheelchair knows us. David helped get the ball rolling on the city's bargain with him to provide him with a livable home in exchange for the title to the property when he's gone (at least, I think that's the deal they made).
But our next-door neighbors haven't introduced themselves to another black woman, our friend Emma, who lives directly across the street from them. Their loss. Seems like "city" behavior to me. Sometimes it helps out here to know who your neighbors are.
Last night was a refreshingly routine emergency. Slowly our neighboorhood is becoming more "citified" and routine-ized. We also don't have a flock of chickens show up on our porch every morning any more. And it's been a long time since there's been a big hog loose in the neighborhood.
Maybe soon, some of those emergency calls for unusual events will be a little further out of town, as new building fills in the wild, semi-natural spots in our neighborhood. Some of the wildness we will miss. And I prefer the type of civil disorder we now get to the type in inner cities that we read about.
