The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank (12 page)

POSTSCRIPT TO SUBURBIAN GEMS

It was either Isaac Newton—or maybe it was Wayne Newton—who once said, “A septic tank does not last forever.” He was right.

Suburbian Gems was a real community.

So were most of the characters in this book.

Certainly, the frustrations, the loneliness, the laughter, the challenges, and especially the analogy were for real. We were like pioneers, in a sense, leaving what we knew in search of our American dream.

Some settlers found Xanadu waiting in the suburbs. For others, it was an exile at San Clemente.

For me, it was one of the most exciting times of my life:

a time when my children were young, my husband ambitious, and happiness for me was having a cake that didn't split in the middle and have to be rebuilt with toothpicks.

In the beginning, it was as we thought it would be: the smell of new wood (why not, it was green), doors that stuck permanently, and the weekend battle cry that shook the countryside, “Why pay someone to do it when we can do it ourselves.”

The supermarket chains hadn't arrived yet with their frozen conveniences, express lines, and red lights over the pot roast.

There was only the country store where the owner was confused by the newcomers who insisted he bag the vegetables and ran him to his grain elevators for 15 cents' worth of pellets for a pet hamster.

I remember one Thanksgiving asking the kid at the gas pump in front of the store, “Do you have Mums?” he wiped his nose on his sleeve and said, “Yeah, but she's up at the house.”

I never looked at the schools that I didn't imagine John Wayne saying to Beulah Bondi, “Someday this town is going to have a real school, and a school marm, and the children will learn to read and write their sums, etc. etc.”

Our kids in the beginning got choked up when Spot chased a stick and Mommy put on a new apron. (Well, what did you expect from a twenty-year-old teacher who earned $1200 a year, taught five spelling classes, two history sessions, supervised the cafeteria during lunch, was class advisor for the Future Homemakers of America, and was in charge of the Senior class play and the drill team's peanut brittle candy sale.)

Later, that too changed when children would duly report to their parents, “I'm part of an innovative enrichment program that is structurally developed to stimulate my mental attitude with muscular development, combined with a language pattern design that is highly comprehensible and sensory.” (One mother advised, “Keep your coat on, Durwood, and no one will notice.”)

One book on the suburbs referred to it as “Creeping Suburbia.” It sounded like a disease. (“This creeping suburbia has got me climbing the wall, Margaret.”) Critics credit it with weakening the family structure, becoming overorganized, isolating people of like incomes, race, social levels, politics, religion, and attitudes from the rest of the world.

It probably did all of those things and some more that haven't been dissected and labeled yet.

But no one can quarrel with the unique sense of belonging that got the suburban settlers involved in their communities.

In a few short years, it became one of the most powerful forces in this country. How they voted. How they ran their schools. How they designated their land. How they incorporated around them what they wanted and needed. How they were governed.

I only know that one morning I looked longingly beyond the suburbs to the city and said to my husband, “Got a letter from Marge and Ralph yesterday.”

“When did they leave Pleasure Plantation for Crown City?”

“A week ago,” I said. “Marge wrote, 'We reached the Downtown complex on the 15th. There are 17,500 units in our section, contained on 83 acres of land. There is rubble everywhere (they're still laying carpets in the hallways) and some of the elevators don't stop at our floor. None of the gift shops is open yet in the mall.' ”

“The sheer guts of it,” said my husband.

" 'The bus service to Ralph's office building in the suburbs is horrendous—sometimes every hour—sometimes an hour and fifteen minutes between buses. It's lonely and desolate here on the fifty-fifth floor. It's like floating in an atmosphere with no trees, no birds . . . only the wind and an occasional jet.

" 'The children have to walk to school. It will take some getting used to after busing it in the suburbs, but they're becoming used to hardships. The mail deliveries, garbage pickups, fire and police protection are nonexistent, but the strike is expected to be settled as soon as the city is solvent again.

" 'There are some bright spots. No more getting in the car to go shopping. There is a store in the building that delivers and we are fortunate enough to have our own cloverleaf exit that comes directly into the building garage.

“ 'Also, it is quiet. On a summer night we can walk and breathe clean air and feel no one else is around. Tomorrow, we are going to visit a tree. It is being planted in the mall in our building. Come visit us. You can't miss us. We have a lamp in the picture window.' ”

I put the letter down. “Doesn't that sound exciting? Living in a city eighty stories high. That is where the next frontier is.”

“What!” shouted my husband. “And give up all of this?”

I looked around. Our “wilderness” had grown to 100,000 people, fifteen traffic lights, five shopping centers, Six elementary schools, two high schools, fifteen churches, four drive-ins, a daily newspaper, and street lights on every corner.

Report cards were computerized, horses were “boarded,” lube jobs on the car were “by appointment only” and there were three, sometimes four cars in every driveway.

Our garage bulged at the seams with lawn spreaders, leaf sweepers, automatic mowers, snow plows, golf carts, bob sleds, skis, ice skates, boats, and camping gear.

Our all-electric kitchen crackled with the efficiency of micro-ovens, dishwashers, ice cube crushers, slow-cooking pots, electric knife sharpeners, brooms, sanders, waxers, blenders, mixers, irons, and electric ice cream freezers and yogurt makers.

The once-silent streets had been replaced by motor and trail bikes, transistors, and piped-in music in the shopping-center parking lot and the air was thick with charcoal.

As we weighed our decision, I couldn't help but speculate how future historians would assess the suburbs—the ghost cities of tomorrow.

Poking through the rubble of that unique civilization, would they be able to figure out what 1200 bleacher seats and two goalposts were doing in the middle of a cornfield?

Would they be able to break the code of the neon signs that flapped in the wind: “go-go,” “carry-out,” “drive-in,” or a sign that instructed, "speak clearly and direct

YOUR ORDER INTO THE CLOWN'S MOUTH?"

Would they be dismayed by the impermanence of a Nova camper with a sign in the window, “sunset bank. Hours: 8 a.m.—2 p.m. weekdays. closed saturdays and sundays”?

Would they probe the sandboxes and come up with a Barbie and Ken form, and figure we got sick?

Or would they piece together scraps of PTA notices, home parties, church bazaars, and little Green Stamps (thirty to a page) and ponder, “How did they survive?”

At that moment the ghosts of 100 million settlers are bound to echo, “We drank!”

About the Author

A former obituary writer and homeroom mother, Erma Bombeck is the author of three bestselling books, a syndicated newspaper column, and is co-author with her husband, Bill, of three children. Her column “At Wit's End” is syndicated throughout the world in 542 newspapers. Her books include At Wit's End, “Just Wait Till You Have Children of Your Own.'” and I Lost Everything in the Post-Natai Depression. The Bombecks live in Paradise Valley, Arizona.