

To get to my neighborhood, you need to go down a two-lane country type of road. There are corn fields and soy bean fields on this road. Then you come to a little woods where the road is only one lane and so only one car can get by, so there are areas to pull off to wait. The car that is going towards the neighborhood gets to go first while the one leaving has to pull over and wait. After you get through that–where, incidentally, at least four trees fell during Hurrricane Irene and blocked the road so that no one could come and no one could go–you see the white pillars for my subdivision. My neighborhood was formed from an old farm where there were pigs and horses.

The neighborhood is mixed types of houses and lots, but they are all about 2 acres. Some houses are on the waterfront and they are bigger. The original house was a “manor” house for a small plantation or farm. It was built over 100 years ago. Other houses are two stories and many people who live here moved from bigger cities and tore down the old 1970s houses and built big two story ones. Most houses are the kind of small ranch house you can see anywhere around the United States.

The people are really mixed based on where they came from (not ethnically), and probably too much, because they don’t really get along all that well, at least compared to other places I have lived. The one in the manor house is a building contractor and really a nasty man and seems to think he is the “lord of the manor”. Other people are normal people with jobs in the nearby little town and do things like nursing. But a lot of people are retired, and so they have plenty of time to gossip about everyone else and they usually get things wrong and so it can be not very nice and probably better to find friends in another neighborhood. 

The neighborhood has a community lot that is right on a little creek. Even though there aren’t many children in the neighborhood, sometimes kids go to the lot to sail their remote-powered boats out in the creek. Other people sometimes take a kayak and go kayaking. Otherwise, there isn’t a park, like in a city. People can takes walks on the road and go out of the neighborhood onto the country road, which is very pretty to do. And many people ride bikes because it isn’t hilly or hard to do.

There are definitely no stores in my neighborhood. The stores are pretty far away in town, so everyone has to drive to do anything at all. I don’t know what a person would do if he couldn’t drive. The grocery store is more than 6 miles away, but at least it’s a good grocery store and there are all the other usual kinds of stores like Walmart and McDonalds and Lowes, so it’s easy enough to get things done.

