They came from overseas like so many before. First, there was one. And then there were two. But they breed so fast that now there are many more...filthy squatters... in my neighborhood! But wait! Let me begin at the beginning.
Back in the late 1970s, a long, long time ago, my neighborhood was nothing more than scrub brush and swamp. Long before that it had been farmland, but black gold made farming unnecessary and the land was played out by that time anyway. Always subject to drought and flood, full of diseases and filth, a place only toads, snakes, spiders, 'dillos, rats, mosquitoes and other vermin would like.
Black gold also brought endless growth and prosperity to Mudtown, now paved over by none other than famous for other reasons, Howard Hughes. With his Daddy's riches, Hughes began paving the streets to rid Mudtown of its infamous name, only to have it achieve infamy as Floodtown. But wait! I'm getting sidetracked.
The city was growing by leaps and bounds. People were pouring in from far off places like Louisiana and Detroit on buses or driving rusty iron. There was so much money to be had, people got executive salaries for sitting at a desk and looking important -- degrees and experience not required -- hell, didn't even have to have a high school diploma or even common sense, just a relative in the business, ya' all. Anyway, the idea was to buy a home -- the American Dream. And then five years later, buy a bigger and better home further out in the suburbs to get away from the riffraff moving in, and a new car/truck to boot to drive on the freeway with a beer in one hand and your other on the horn. Make that a cell phone today.
Some smart men got hold of this idea and bought up all the scrub brush in this area 20 miles from downtown. They covered over a branch of Keegan's Bayou so water wouldn't just sit there but run down fast. And then they laid out an ideal community of three thousand homes tightly packed, with a clubhouse, pool, and tennis court for attractions. A new elementary school topped it off, and endless suburbia had arrived.
The houses, all thrown up ticky-tacky and lickety-split, sold like hotcakes. We had to mortgage my stepchildren and swear on next year's salary that we could pay the loan shark's usury interest rate. But we were the lucky ones. So many were crowded in crummy little apartments filled with roaches and crying children. Thanks to a massive electrical power line behind my house, I did not have to look at my neighbors back window, thirty feet away. To my dismay, across the power right-of-way, a huge apartment complex emerged, several more followed. The owner assured me that they would be first class and occupied by good people they screened before allowing to move in.
Let me describe it for you. Neat little houses all in a row. Friendly new neighbors with lots of kids and pets. A strict community code requiring one ugly tree, neatly mowed and edged St. Augustine grass, a complementary crape myrtle, oleander, or hibiscus accent the homeowner had to install. Those in the money planted a loblolly pine, magnolia or live oak, the standard for uniformity, conformity, and family values. Citations were given for unsightly cars, unsightly paint, any trash out front, and any growing of wildflowers or grass over two inches tall. Clippings were not allowed to compost, but raked up and placed in non-biodegradable plastic bags and hauled 50 miles to a landfill. Heavy doses of fertilizer, weed killer, and insecticide were applied to either kill the lawn, or run off into the storm sewers during the next hard rain as nature intended.
Two years later OPEC decided to lower the cost of oil. Streets paved with gold city went into a tailspin. Everyone on my street lost their cushy job and moved away, foreclosed or not. The loan sharks failed. The factories failed. The shiny new downtown was bought for a pittance by wealthy Arabs at one third their previous value. The houses on my street languished empty for years. Finally, people speaking strange languages with stranger customs began buying them, chipping away at the conformity of our neat little paradise. These enterprising strangers, by taking advantage of the situation and working hard, soon grew to dislike the community as they got richer. Like so many before, they moved out, further out, buying big houses in other ideal communities. They sold their houses to landlords who rented them for a tidy profit.
The apartment complexes also emptied out. Something called Section 8 allowed a lot of people without money, jobs, or education to move into nice new apartments and destroy them without paying rent. Prosperous businesses started up selling the bud of the hemp, and other herbal medicines derived from plants like poppies from Asia and coca from South America. This created a lot of excitement and improved the sale of firearms and burglar alarms. There was always loud music and noise at night, punctuated by bursts of gunfire like fireworks, police sirens, and the occasional helicopter hovering overhead for hours.
The adjacent land set aside for commercial development never got developed. All the rats, snakes, possums and other critters moved in along with a few unfortunate street people who helped keep the neighborhood free of aluminum cans, exterior copper wiring, aluminum windows from vacant houses, brass fireplug valves, and the occasional appliance. Their colorful tents could be seen up under the brush and their colorful attire, hair, and teeth could be viewed as they pushed their shopping carts from well-known stores on the streets every day earning their next bottle of wine.
When Texans finally got back into the White House, they made sure that their home state got its share. They opened the spigots and the money came pouring in again. The rich got richer and the money kept trickling down. It took a while to get to the neighborhood, but finally all the houses were occupied again and some of them even had 6, 7, or 8 vans and trucks in the driveway! Don't get me wrong, even though they didn't call USA home and they sent their earnings to their mama, and lived several to a bedroom to save money from their meager salaries, they helped, everyday, to build the new city from houses to highways, and mowed and trimmed everybody's lawn practically free! Why hire a skilled craftsman to fix your house when you could watch football on your lazy ass, drinking beer and cramming chips while a guy you picked up on the street did the heavy lifting for you? Who cares if he doesn't understand you and does shoddy work? He's cheap and that's all that matters. Must buy more electronic toys.
Most of the shopping cart crowd left for greener pastures. Refugees from Katrina filled the apartments to the brim, and once again our streets are lined with colorful wrappings from numerous fast food joints pumping artery clogging fat and chemicals into the sedimentary apartment living lot. The starving have been replaced by a hoard of nice round, healthy bodies, shuffling as they walk, swiftly on their way to diabetes, heart failure, and the other joys of early retirement from never having to work at all. The vacant land that was never developed lo these many years is slowly being turned into dollar stores, Starbucks, and bottled water outlets for the masses, making sure to pave over every green spot and provide a few strategically placed plants, full of weeds and trash, to give the appearance of natural stewardship.
Which brings us, finally, to the invaders. Two years ago, they arrived at a overgrown, trash filled, pristine tract of land exactly one block as the bird flies from my little suburban heaven and only a half block from a now semi-prosperous strip of business Americana teeming with parking and unparking cars, shoppers, onlookers, and downright loiters with cell phones. Gleefully hanging their graying whites out like dirty rags in the sun, they set up shop and began stripping leaves so that they would have something to sit on. It wasn't long before they were seen in the neighborhood raiding our trees for sticks and branches without asking permission. For the unlucky, they dropped putrid bombs of unspeakable composition on friend and foe alike, but most often, car windshields parked in driveways.
But worse! They started having babies! They didn't have health insurance or a baby doctor. Not even the stork to help them out. There were too many of them already and it was obvious they weren't practicing birth control. I feared for the young, because I began to see hawks and owls in the neighborhood, and worse, buzzards circling overhead. Was anyone doing anything? Taking action? No. Everybody was too busy with their little lives and walked on by as the tragedy of overpopulation unfolded and the babies were picked off, one by one, without even an Amber Alert!
Finally, the owners, trying to sell the property for over 25 years, took heroic action. In the fall, when the baby boom was over and the illegals from Africa via South America had left to scavenge and scrape a living in warmer climes, they cut down all the trees that these squatters, these roosters, had made their home. So as not to make the property attractive, the big old trees were piled up in ugly piles and left to rot and become termite food. A home to the vermin who so desperately needed a place to hang out as pristine suburbia crowded in. This, of course, attracted more trash and weeds, and, as the owners intended, made it very unattractive for the filthy squatters to return. To top it off, a new little development was being built on the north side, just south of the big supermarket, encroaching further on the property to the owners' delight upon selling a part of their long speculation.
In the spring, the wildflowers once again overran the place, polluting it with their cheery faces, wondrous smells, and stinging bees. Where the piles of brush stood, an explosion of sunflowers grew like a planted corn field until their ugly brown faces and bonnet like yellow petals towered like Jack in the Beanstalk by the thousands hiding the cut wood piles completely. The poor little fire ants had a long climb to the top.
Unfortunately, the owners had left a few trees growing. The intrepid scavengers, wending their way north by hitchhiking on warm breezes, had once again arrived and decided to set up shop and began their nasty baby making ritual. Like the fire ants and killer bees, this unwanted trash has come to our shores without so much as even a passport. Picking away at cow dung and eating frogs, snakes, slugs, and fishing for shrimp without a license. Only to bring them back and dump them, in plain view, without so much as PortaPotty. Shameful. And then there's the matter of them shedding their clothes and revealing parts of their bodies to the public night and day. Their children are practically naked and they keep raising their arms as if to show us that they don't use deodorant.
I think it's time that we passed an ordinance to ban them from the city. They are not neat and clean, don't pay taxes, and pollute the air with their noise and fishy smell. Let's save the vacant lots for the true natives of the Texas West, horses and cows.
*Note: Driven from their nesting place further west by new development, a rookery of Cattle Egrets has persevered in one of the few undeveloped, wooded vacant lots in Southwest Houston. They will be here long after the last human walks this Earth.
This is very informative and revealing, quite cutting in content and points of view, however true. We have the same social problem in our country, our city officials had to apply "tougher implementation" and demolished all illegal tenants and relocate them elsewhere. City zoning ordinances were passed but still some stubbornly move to other areas only to start the problem all over again. Only the vigilance of lawmakers and law enforcers will correct the "mushrooms" and motivate them to improve their lives somehow.
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Filthy Squatters
