This Village

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald's (you didn't know that, did you?  Neither did I.) The Great Gatsby begins this way: "In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.  'Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone...just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had'...I'm inclined to reserve all judgements, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores...Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope.  I am still afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested and as I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.  And after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit."

A friend, who is a lawyer, called me yesterday about a couple of things, and one of them was one of his clients, who has come to own a couple of properties in the Village, and whose in-laws own others, and my friend portrayed his client and the client's in-laws as misfits.  We're talking here, among other things, about people who maintain properties very poorly, who seem preferentially not to get along with each other, and who live like what is derisively referred to as "trailer trash."  This is complete with internecine squabbles, sabotages, and mutually destructive legal maneuvering.  My friend's client's wife was going to make a will which would have left nothing to her husband (don't ask; I didn't), but she died precipitously, so he got "everything," and now, he and her family are fighting with each other.

It's not to say that such uncivilized goings-on don't occur in lots of places.  They do.  But there's something that invites these kinds of residents in BP.   For who knows what reasons, our property values have been comparatively low, for the kinds of properties which are valued.  The same BP property would cost more in MSV, only 1/2-1 mile down the road.  So we're easy access, so to speak, for people who want to own properties, but don't want to live somewhere even cheaper, like parts of CNM.

Also, we're small.  We're not the smallest municipality in the county, but the combination (or "perfect storm") of our being inexpensive enough to avail easy access, and small, mean that we sometimes get property owners who figure out that they can be bigger fish in a smaller pond than they could get away with somewhere else.

Further, we're unusually simple, at least insofar as that we sort of only have one zone (plus the exception for the church), which means that up to a point, "it doesn't take a rocket scientist," so to speak.

So we get some weird neighbors, some of whom become weird Commissioners.  And again, it's not as if this doesn't happen in many other places.  It does.  It just seems like the concentration is higher here.

It's an interesting social exercise to talk about making provisions for, let's call them, less fortunate people.  We contribute to the CNM effort to support the poor and elderly, and we acquire (free) from the county various "Thanksgiving" provisions to distribute to our own neighbors.  (We used to, when we had Commissions that could get their acts together.)  We try, as Fitzgerald's narrator recounted, to remember that some people -- and some of us -- are essentially less fortunate than are others.  That's the mantra: less fortunate, or not as lucky.  That's what makes the theory work.  It's what motivates those of us who are more fortunate, and luckier.  But we approach Fitzgerald's narrator's "limit," or have creeping ill feeling about it, when those we tell ourselves we're helping either don't help themselves, or they position themselves as adversaries to us.  It's easier to write off as a disadvantage someone's station in life than it is to write off their attitude, in the context of adequate capacity and resources.

Just to take one example -- and it's one that gets noteworthy mention from some BP residents and property-owners -- there are some people who could afford to maintain their properties better, and the Codes say they're required to maintain them better, but they just don't feel like it.  Not only are the conditions of their properties not important to them, but their neighbors and the rules by which we (choose to) live together are not important to them.  This is the kind of realization, and affront, that tests the limits of our tolerance.

And whether it's the Steve Bernards or the Tracy Truppmans of the Village, some people's delusions of grandeur and autocracy also test the limits of our willingness, and ability, to tolerate.  Difficult childhoods?  Personality quirks?  We expect people to rise to the occasion.  At the very least, they should be grateful for what they're given, including support.

Long ago, I adopted a theory that some misbehaviors are understandable, but not acceptable.  I get it.  That's how you feel.  And I understand why you feel that way.  But you can't act like that.

It's a curiosity that in the Village, we allow more misbehavior than might be allowed somewhere else.  We're not exactly so small, and so intimate, that we can't bring ourselves to make demands of ourselves.  Not exactly.  There are limits.