Over the next few months here on Tasty Sauce I'd like to introduce you to some of the people who live on one street in a coastal Southern California new home community. You've already gotten to know Cassie, who sold them all their homes. Now it's time to meet some of her customers, starting with Eddie Petrocelli.
Imagine barbells or a baby’s rattle – two orbs connected by
a metal rod or a silver cylinder - and you will know what Camino Dos Cortes
looks like. Two cul de sacs
connected by a straight line of a street, fourteen new houses sidled up next to
each other as closely as the city code will allow until they must curve around
the cul de sac. There the lots
fall into pie shapes, with the point of the pie slice at the street flaring
back into a large wide back yard.
One cul de sac is missing the two end homes and instead has
a grassy hill up to an adjoining street with a walkway down to Dos Cortes. The other cul de sac borders California
wild land that glows green and yellow in the spring after the winter
rains. That’s the way it was when
everyone put down their deposits and signed their contracts. Now, though, in late September, the
hills are gray with brush gone dry from lack of rain.
One row of houses backs up to a hill with a network of
concrete drainage culverts and newly installed landscaping intended to hold and
beautify the slope. So far it has
done neither. The houses here were
less expensive than the ones across the street that have expansive views toward
the ocean. You can’t always see
the ocean in the distance, but the owners of these homes have paid dearly for
the possibility of an ocean view.
It’s been almost a year since the homes on Dos Cortes were
completed, people moved in and the neighborhood began to take shape. Over a period of two months moving vans
came and went, sometimes three or four at a time jockeying for position on the
street. Workers’ trucks buzzed
around like gnats as last minute adjustments were made to the homes, utilities
were connected and buyers turned into homeowners and met their neighbors. Even though some of them had paid
vastly different amounts for their homes, they all had a sense of equality and
expansiveness for their new neighbors, people they expected would become fast
friends. It was like the beginning
of a marriage, the honeymoon period, where love blinds spouses to their
annoying habits and greater failings.
Neighbors met each other for the first time at the mailbox
or in the street, shaking hands and making introductions as they unloaded boxes
or took out the trash. Someone
organized an open house to get acquainted. The couples with children clustered
together as the kids sized each other up.
The moms talked about forming a playgroup. The dads talked about their jobs, their golf games and
surfing Trestles. There were also
two single men and one single woman, one set of grandparents and two newlywed
couples who mingled and introduced themselves over guacamole, chips and
beer. Everyone was full of promise
for their new neighborhood, expectations high.
The street that led to Camino Dos Cortes was named Via Amor
and that prompted Kristen Weber, one of the moms, to suggest that they all
lived at the end of Love Street, that this bit of California real estate was
where Love Street emptied out, pouring all the love onto their street. That made their street full of love,
she said, and before long they were all saying they lived on Love Street,
ignoring the actual name of their street.
“It doesn’t matter what the street is really called,”
Kristen told Cassie in the sales office. “We all love each other, so we live on
Love Street. It’s so perfect.”
For a while it was true – all was beautiful on Love Street,
except maybe for Eddie Petrocelli.
* * * * *
Eddie Petrocelli stirred things up from the day he moved in,
when he put a life-sized plastic alligator in his front yard. Well, you couldn’t exactly call it a
yard yet. To be honest, it was
raked dirt like everyone else’s lot.
If you came up Via Amor and turned right into the cul de
sac, Eddie’s house was the third house on the right, next to the grassy
hill. If you turned left from Via
Amor you’d miss seeing Eddie’s house altogether, but when you drove out of the
neighborhood you couldn’t miss the house or the alligator. If you walked the dog or chased the
kids or just strolled at dawn or dusk, the alligator seemed to snarl at you as
you went by. Dogs growled at it,
then peed on it when it didn’t move.
Babies cried when they saw it, but a few adventurous kids used it as a
climbing toy, much to their mothers’ dismay.
Eddie Petrocelli was one of the single men on the block, but
no one considered him a “catch”, except maybe Eddie himself. He was a big boisterous fellow in his
late thirties with thick black hair and a barrel chest, who enjoyed telling
everyone he encountered how successful he was as a sub prime mortgage broker.
“I make $50,000 a month, man,” he told Dan Christiansen
across the street, who hadn’t asked and didn’t care how much Eddie made a month
or a year or in his lifetime. “You
should try it. I can get you a
job. I have my own company and I
can hire whoever I want. You’d
make a bundle,” Eddie boasted. But
Dan was happy as a civil engineer and had no desire to work for Eddie, so he
said no thanks. Eddie slapped Dan
on the back and said to keep it in mind.
“What I really want to talk to you about is the alligator,”
Dan said.
“Isn’t it a hoot?” Eddie said, letting out a guffaw. “It’s just temporary. I’ll take it down when I start my
landscaping.”
That was another bone of contention the neighbors
discussed. Almost everyone else
had done their landscaping, but Eddie still had a dirt yard. Dan decided to stick to the alligator
issue.
“Well, it’s been ten months now and the neighbors aren’t
that crazy about it. Could you
maybe move it to the back yard?” Dan had the dubious honor of being the
spokesperson for several of the neighbors who’d been talking about this
eyesore. Since Dan was such a
mild-mannered guy, they all decided he would be best suited to approach Eddie.
Eddie’s brow furrowed and a dark cloud seemed to cover his
face for just a moment before a smile returned to his lips. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I like it there.”
Dan thought he’d heard Eddie wrong. Was the guy really making an issue of
this? “We were hoping to resolve
this in a friendly fashion. No one
wants to get pissy about this, but the CC&R’s are pretty clear about lawn
ornaments,” Dan said.
“I like the alligator.
The alligator stays.” Eddie said with an intensity that surprised
Dan.
“Oh,” said Dan, shocked by Eddie’s lack of Love Street
cooperative spirit. “I guess we’ll
see about that.”
“I guess we will,” said Eddie. He stood straight as a sentinel in front of the alligator.
Dan shook his head as he walked back to his house. That hadn’t gone well, not well at all.
* * * * *
The next morning when Dan went out to pick up his newspaper, he saw that Eddie had been busy overnight. Three plastic bunnies and two plastic
squirrels cavorted around the alligator, and a wire coat hanger hung from
the alligator’s snout. A foot high
redwood picket fence edged the sidewalk in front of Eddie’s house and a wooden
picnic table with attached benches sat in the middle of the dirt
yard. On the Juliet balcony above the garage a full-sized carousel horse looked like it was about to leap over the railing. Dan thought he saw Eddie peeking out from behind the curtain and could swear he was laughing.
Just like that the honeymoon was over on Love Street.