Casa de Bueno Gordo
September 6, 2000
Planned Living
It was early
Wednesday morning. Your alarm clock gave off the mating call of one of
those lonely caribou that inhabit northern Canada. An animal known for
only two things, a huge rack of antlers and the unique ability to wake
the entire forest at four a.m. You hit the mewling beast twice before it
finally submits to your will and wanders off unmated. It was time to wake
up once more and face the day.
You were
more than a little tempted to show the day the other side of your cheery
disposition, but sticking your ass out the bedroom window is more than
frowned upon in the perfectly planned community of Bueno Gordo. Yes, Bueno
Gordo, a town with all the mystery and wonder for which these picture perfect
Stepford communities are famed.
Consider
the mystery of why someone would name a town in the middle of Minnesota
after the Spanish words for "good" and "fat." And a wonder in the sense
that you wonder why you ever agreed to move here. In the summer when you
bought your little three bedroom hacienda, with its stucco walls, and wrought
iron fences, you were taken in by the strange Latin charm and warm breezes
blowing in from the lake just feet from your lanai. You weren't even sure
what a lanai was, but you knew you needed one. And for the first three
months you put up with mosquitoes and the black flies. You mowed your lawn
on a near daily basis to meet the strict grass height requirements instituted
by the home owners association. And you trained your dog to not bark between
the hours of 6:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m. You also trained your children to
ride their bikes on the right side of the road and cross only at the cross
walks neatly laid out in bright, but not too bright, neon yellow at every
corner of a perfectly laid out grid.
That was
the summer and it still almost seemed worth the hassle. The good schools
and the low crime rate made up for the small inconveniences of planned
living. And as you raked every leaf off of your lawn and piled them into
three pristine piles. None of which exceeded five feet in diameter or higher
than three feet. And as you sat on the porch watching to make sure none
of the hooligans that had been bullying your son and daughter came by during
the night to disturb your perfect piles, before the yard waste collectors
showed up at 5:30 a.m. It still seemed all right.
But now
it was the coldest December in your memory. The coldest winter in the memory
of that old guy who sits down at the bait shop and says he was a Civil
War Veteran. And the cold wind blows off of the now frozen lake piling
snow higher and higher against the sides of your perfect Spanish Villa
which has sprung not one but six leaks in the foundation. As your lanai
turns out to be the perfect timber for a lonely beaver that seems to be
building a damn in your once clean pool. And as sun goes down at three
in the afternoon and then rises for an hour and a half at noon before it
sneaks back behind the western horizon to go shine on someplace nice like
Fiji. You think to your self that you should have voted for Al Gore.
In November
please vote for Al Gore, because nobody wants to suffer through a winter
of Republican discontent.