Doze Summertime Blues; Wait, it's October!

Now, anyone that knows me well, knows that I'm not one to complain. Why, just the other day Karen commented, "Gary, you seem to be so optimistic and bubbly, with the war and inflation, and the World coming down around us and you whistling Broadway show tunes, you're almost irritating."

Actually, while we go into our fifth month of road construction on our street, a project that originally was to be done on August 7, I've been whistling tunes from Porgy and Bess:

"Well, it ain't necessarily so
Well, it ain't necessarily so
Dey says dey be done soon
Dey maybe done pave soon
But it ain't necessarily so"

"Summertime" has graduated to "Autumn Leaves," and I'm starting to brush off the dust on the Christmas classics. "I am the Ghost of Construction Past, the Ghost of Neverending Future Construction will haunt you later."

Our street is 1/4 mile long. Having just seen Ken Burns' "The War," we realize that if Patton had moved his troops with similar speed from Sicily to Berlin, he would have reached there around November 15, 4934. And Patton had at least some resistance! In the meantime, our construction crew is leaving similar destruction in their path.

Yes, this was our mail box, which greeted us the other day upon our return from work. And they didn't even leave a note, like "oops", or "while you were out". I walked down the street to a large group of guys in Sears' regulation boots and plaid shirts and six of them sheepishly asked if our mailbox was the one which they "tipped" over and pointed to one guy who didn't have anyone left to point to. I assured the manager that "we noticed" the mailbox and inquired what they were going to do about it. They have assured me that they have their "best men" on it which, as you can imagine, provides me no end of comfort.

So, a group of us from the neighborhood has been mobilizing and we may counter-attack soon, feeling that it might even speed up the contractor's work. Couldn't slow them down much.