A few weeks ago, my little family was happily living under the misguided assumption that all the developers and real estate agents had overlooked our quiet little street in Spring Hill.
For five years, we had lived peacefully, surrounded by vacant lots on three sides of us. This little suburban forest gave us the illusion of country living.
Our neighbors included a family of possums, some distinguished looking gopher tortoises, a family of stray cats and an old guy from New York. Occasionally, we even saw a fox drift through the neighborhood.
But, alas, all that is starting to disappear.
Progress is coming to our isolated little enclave in the form of new neighbors.
The warning signs were subtle at first.
A surveyor showed up and started, well, surveying. We hoped maybe he was a trainee just getting some practice. But just before Christmas, he planted some wooden stakes in the ground.
My wife - by then in denial as to what was happening - decorated those stakes with Christmas tinsel so that they resembled candy canes. It made her feel better, so I humored her.
Soon, the real estate sign, which had been ignored all these years and had stood as a monument to our splendid isolation, was vandalized with an ugly, four-letter word: SOLD.
Not long after, this dude showed up with a bulldozer and, in all likelihood, a pile of unresolved childhood issues pertaining to trees. He used his bulldozer to take out his frustrations, digging and plundering until every last tree on that lot was gone.
And that rascal smiled the whole time.
My wife was in tears. My girls mourned for the dead trees. But I have to give Dozer Man his due. He was an artiste when it comes to pillaging the land. He pushed over some 60-foot pines that I felt certain would come crashing down on my house, probably atop my favorite bathroom.
When Dozer Man was done, we realized everyone in the neighborhood could now see all the junk lying around the house and in our back yard. For years, this had been our dirty little secret. Now it was a neighborhood scandal. We had to clean up.
It is one thing to live as a slob, but quite another for people to know about it.
The next step in the transformation of the vacant lot puzzled us: They put up a portable toilet.
For a couple of weeks, there was nothing but the toilet. We thought perhaps the new neighbors had blown their budget on the land and the overzealous Dozer Artist. We wondered if they were drastically scaling back the floor plan, from a 3-2-2 to a 0-1-0.
My wife and I had hoped for something stylish that might improve our property values. But my two little girls were thrilled with the toilet. They envisioned being able to ride their bikes on our street all day long without ever having to go back in the house when nature calls.
Eventually, some workers came and started arranging a pile of wooden planks on the ground in a shape resembling the outline of a house. The girls thought perhaps this was a pretend house with invisible walls. And they grew even more excited.
The workers - who occasionally used the portable toilet - brought in a huge truck and poured concrete into their cookie cutter outline. It was so pretty and smooth and wet when they flattened it out. It looked like the ice on a hockey rink after the Zamboni has been by.
When it dried a little bit, we asked the men if they would mind if we came over and put our footprints in the cement, just as the stars do in Hollywood. But I guess he thought the owners might not care to see the outline of our toes on their lanai.
The girls were disappointed again.
I realize that vacant lots are being gobbled up all over Spring Hill. No doubt it is good for property values and good that people are building here rather than in some pretty pasture out in the country.
But I will miss the jungle that served as my own personal privacy fence. I will miss the ease of being able to streak out to the driveway in my underwear to get the morning paper.
For now, at least, one thing offers us comfort: the convenience of having a portable toilet along our street.
- Robert King can be reached at 352 848-1432. Send e-mail to rking@sptimes.com
