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the Fussies
Thursday, September 6 2007
Across the Dug Hill Road is a modernist angular house that our friend Zelig refers to as "that 70s House." It is occupied by a pair of physically-fit fifty-somethings who moved up here about two years ago from the city. They're nice enough, but over time I've had reason to start referring to them as "the Fussies."
The Fussies couldn't be less like us even if they were Republicans (though they're not). We could see evidence of a socio-economic chasm soon after they moved in. It all started when a SAFECO sign appeared at the end of their driveway, leading us to suspect that, unlike some in the neighborhood, the Fussies are given to locking their doors. Soon thereafter Mrs. Fussy was talking to Gretchen and Gretchen casually mentioned her daily walks in the forest. "You'd walk in the woods alone?" Mrs. Fussy asked in horror.
Unlike everyone else on our road, the Fussies signed up with a service (mob-owned, like all such services) that regularly comes and hauls away their trash, even though do-it-yourself trash disposal is as easy as a four mile drive to the dump at the north end of Dug Hill Road.
Soon we learned that the Fussies didn't trust the water coming from their well; they'd signed up for regular water deliveries (from a possibly-mob-owned source far less obvious to them than the ground beneath their feet). More recently I started taking note of their fuel deliveries and was astounded to find that they come monthly, even in the warm seasons. (We only get fuel deliveries in winter, and at this point we're down to one 250 gallon delivery of oil per year.)
Unable to live with the occasional blackouts caused by the notoriously-decrepit electrical transmission infrastructure of Dug Hill Road, the Fussies installed a generator that kicks on automatically the moment power fails. (In such conditions I find I can easily check my email just by taking a laptop out into the driveway and jumping onto their WiFi network.)
Every Monday a swarm of Mexicans shows up to tend to the many needs of the Fussies' lawn and flower beds, a frenzied operation that typically takes fifteen minutes. Last year they added three or four feet of floor space to back of their house. And for several months this summer they've had a team of contractors redoing their flooring (by contrast, we had a thousand square feet of hardwood floors professionally installed by one guy in a single weekend). These things are all obvious to me, since my laboratory window is the only part of our living space that looks directly across the road, and I can see the constant stream of deliveries and workmen coming and going, benefiting from some mysteriously endless font of disposable income.
Today the Fussies hired a small earth mover to do something, I'm not entirely certain what, to their flawless yard. Whatever it was, it took all day.
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