5. Sidewalk

Elliot says that places that don't have sidewalks do so to keep the poor people away. This used to make me laugh until I spent more time in suburbs and realized that, yup, sidewalks are few and far between. Not only in the residential areas, but near the strip malls and commercial districts. Huh.

Here there are poor people, obviously. I technically live in the inner city, although it doesn't look like it because "inner city" has many shades of gray that suburban dwellers (at least those who dwell there out of fear of the inner city) do not see. Yes, people are poor here--63118 has an estimated 35% of its population below the poverty line, which, if you live here long enough, know is a big fat lie. It should be much higher, since it's based on a false assumption of how people spend their money these days. 0f the estimated 30,000 people who live in my zip code, that's approximately 10,500 people living on not enough money.

But this is about sidewalks.

Our sidewalks are busy little places. There's a bus stop at the end of the block, so we do have foot traffic back and forth. Usually the same faces. And the park draws people west down our street with their dogs, to the dismay (or excitement?) of my visually impaired rottweiler. But most of the busy comes from children. There are 26 children under the age of 12 on our block, with one on the way. Everybody knows everybody else--there are no strangers hanging out on the stoops and sidewalks here. Passing through, but not staying.

Hopscotch, of course, makes an appearance. Picnics, too. Bikes and scooters fly by, making my bare toes nervous in the summertime. Lots of digging in the tree lawns leads to small piles of dirt and rocks. An occasional smashed brick. One day, Brent walked out to find a large orange traffic cone sitting on the sidewalk in front of his house. No one claimed it, and so it's part of gangway scenery now, brought out when needed for obstacle courses.

Being so close to Grand, trash blows up our way sometimes, and so there will be a mysterious hot-fries package lying on the sidewalk. Passers-by will also litter, always the cheapest brands of beer for us.

Every snowfall produces dads on the sidewalks, shoveling paths. Brent meets up with Mike meets up with Colin. If you're out first, you try to do at least a one-shovel-wide rudimentary start down the length from Ralph's to Corey's. Mike, as I said, will shovel, but so will I (I'm also the only wife/mom who mows grass, but that's another story). I like getting the heart rate up and moving the snow, since here in St. Louis, snow is a soft blanket of 3-6 inches, not anything scary or big. And the sidewalk I'm in charge of is 36 feet long. Not much.

I'm glad the developer, back in 1903-1905, didn't opt to copy Compton Heights and eliminate sidewalks from his plan. I think they make our street more alive. Without them, the kids would be in backyards, cloistered away from each other in their own private spaces. And Dara wouldn't have much reason to bark. And how she loves to bark.