On the street where we live

4401 is the number of the street on which Marsha and I live. And it can be very confusing.

You see, the house across the street and one door to the left also is 4401. How can that be 4401 when we have 4401? It’s not a mistake, well, of course it’s a mistake except it’s not a mistake. That’s what it really is.

I can only imagine the double-takes the first few times the rug-delivery folks came to our T in the road, looking left and then right and seeing 4401 on both houses. These rugs are big and bulky and a pain to wrestle with. I’m sure these guys didn’t want to get it wrong.

It doesn’t happen much anymore, of course. And when it does, we know our driver is on vacation or called in sick and somebody new is on the route. Same thing with our mailman. Still, there are times when Alan and Sherry at the other 4401 get our stuff and we get theirs.

We don’t know our other neighbors very well. The ones at 4402 are creeps. They built a two-story, eight-car garage that dwarfs their own house and blocks the view of the woman across the way on our side of the street. She really lets us know about it. The HOA rules didn’t specifically outlaw such structures because no one ever thought anyone would want to buidld one. No one says hello to these people and when they do, or say “Have a nice day” we don’t mean it. There was a domino effect to this garage, too. The woman across the way has filed suit, and put up a weatherproof opaque white fabric around the front yard of her place so she won’t have to look at that garage. It’s awful. We all have to look at that now. She placed these large circular lights that she can change the colors in so it’ll glow a soft blue or red. It doesn’t help. She’s kind of odd, too, as if you couldn’t tell.

We have neighbors around the bend about a quarter-mile away. During Covid they gathered, each on their own driveway for a happy hour, keeping their distance and calling over from the tables and chairs they’d set up. They’re cool. But no, we got the one’s we’ve got.

Anyway, back to the road. It goes east from 44th Street, tees off to the right and then curves south. So as you head kind of back toward town the numbers don’t get lower like I think they would. They get bigger and the address remains East “Smith” Street, even though it’s not going east. The other 4401 is found on the other, left-hand side of the tee and it curls north and east, a long way east, but it’s not east on the addresses. It’s listed as north. Houses on the right-hand side of the road are always odd-numbered. So, the first house off the tee in either direction is on the right-hand side, thus the two 4401s.

Get it?

Our mailman has been on our route for as long as I remember. I could usually hear him coming. He’d be listening to Rush Limbaugh. His show would be blaring out the open-door panels of his jeep. I’d be in the garage, working on these wooden screen doors I used to build for houses in the historic neighborhoods downtown. He must have known we were a house of liberals for I swear he’d crank up the volume as he’d approach our box. How would he know we are liberals? Well, for one, we read. That’s a dead giveaway. We subscribe to The Nation, Vanity Fair, Mother Jones, The Week (which isn’t actually liberal, but it deals with the facts and that makes for a liberal publication these days).

Trump’s concerns about mail-in ballots actually got me concerned. I didn’t think our mailman would do anything bad, like be real slow getting our ballots where they needed to be on time. But I didn’t trust him enough to take the chance. I delivered them to the post office myself.

In my opinion the most liberal magazine we subscribe to is Consumer Reports. It’s not like Republicans, who try to scare everyone about everything , starting way back when with Big Bird. And then say they are the only ones that can protect us. You’d think the scary stuff they’d focus on protecting us from would be Putin and China. But no. These days the scary stuff includes voting machines, Joe Biden, Bud Light, Hillary and worst of all, Taylor Swift. Immigration is the big fear and securing the border they say is their top priority, but nah, they’ll deal with it when a Republican becomes president. That could be decades away.

Consumer Reports doesn’t resort to using fear. It actually does try to warn and advise its readers about anything from dangerous toy parts, to tainted food, car recalls, dryers that could catch fire. And it can help steer us to making smarter purchases. All that kind of thing. It even developed the research used in a bipartisan bill that was passed recently that will keep furniture from toppling over on toddlers keen on climbing on them. Bipartisan! Mercy me, it might be the one bill the House will pass all year.

Anyway, Limbaugh’s dead. The mailman listens to classical music now. Maybe I can trust him now.