april is the cruellest month, as today's 52-degree high attests. I took the whole family, including Wolf Dog, to an outdoor party for which we had to wear heavy jackets against the wind. I was in flannel-lined jeans and an ear band, wimp that I am. Wolf Dog just held onto his loosening undercoat for another day.

As a result of the kids' accommodations at this party, Squinx wants us to buy a bounce house. Were it not for the maintenance I am sure some of our neighbors would have already done just that. It's the mildew that kills. Roll that thing up when the humidity's high, and it'll stink so bad on unfurling you may as well have stashed it in the Everglades.

We learned this the easy way stopping by a church festival where the vestry had chosen to buy a bounce house rather than rent every year. Squinx came home smelling as if she'd spent a week with a particularly unsanitary troop of Boy Scouts.

If homeowners ever manage to store these things without their turning green, they will become the trampoline of the 21st century.

as a kid, my toy tastes were more compact. I collected Matchbox cars, those nearly indestructible, palm-sized metal reproduction automobiles. One thing I knew about a visit to Woolworth's with Mom was that I always got to take home a new Matchbox. Naturally, the toys aisle was the first place I went upon arrival, and Mom knew I'd still be there by the time she got done shopping for whatever it was mothers of the 1960s bought at Woolworth's.

Matchbox had its competitors, of course. Mattel's Hot Wheels showed up in the '60s to challenge the British monopoly, and did an impressive job of capturing the single-digit-age boy imagination. I thought they were a tad on the cheesy side, with their flame jobs and inevitable rally wheels. But they had a broader selection than Matchbox, which filled out its line with mostly four-door sedans and station wagons. No muscle cars, please, we're British.

It was the wheels on Hot Wheels that disturbed me. Whereas Matchbox seemed to nail their narrow, plastic tires on with a solid axle front-and-rear, Hot Wheels felt more as if they'd pinned theirs in place. The axles flexed, which lent some realism to the design (they had suspension!). But you couldn't push them as hard: They'd bottom out and grind to a halt. Furthermore, the functionality of sprung suspension seemed gratuitous. Why would a two-inch automobile with no occupants need a smooth ride?

Hot Wheels were California's answer to staid, English Matchbox, the rock-n-roll surfer with racing stripes showing up at Prince Philip's wedding. A boy studying the pegboard at Woolworth's could not reach past that chrome-finish Camaro. The stiff-necks in London must have looked at it and figured it for an Italian concept car. "Ramp up our Studebaker production line, Nigel. We'll suffocate this upstart with our relentless conventionality."

By 1970, Matchbox seemed to have run out of inspiration. They wouldn't go for the swoopy Corvette; but you could have anything Nash ever produced, and tow trucks with little plastic hooks that wouldn't pull anything more than an inch before popping off.

the biggest disappointment for a boy was the other toy car line, the Corgi. You never wanted one of those for a gift, not after the first one you brought home. They came in cellophane-paneled display boxes, not the blister packs of Matchbox fame, and they were kept on a shelf above the other little cars, obviously intended for your serious older brother.

What made Corgis most intolerable was their scale. They were about 2/3 larger than Matchbox, and they wouldn't fit in the slots of your storage box. On whatever play surface, they menaced your entire collection with their bulk. "I am the Datsun 240Z, and I dwarf even your bread-delivery van. Bow down to the mighty Corgi!"

Furthermore, unlike Matchbox, Corgis didn't even bother to move their steering wheels to the American side for export. It was like some dyslexic megalomaniac's idea of a toy.

Beyond these brands, there was some other dinky model that came three to a package, with no interior or resemblance to any particular brand of actual automobile. They could be flattened with a hammer, which was exactly what you wanted to do to them because they were so cheap-looking. A distant relative might send you these, on hearing you "liked little toy cars." And you'd have to write a thank-you note, your first compulsory fake-gratitude experience. "Dear Great Aunt Hattie: Thank you for the generic, squeaky-wheeled car-oids. They have a special place of honor at the bottom of my sandbox. Love, Rittenhouse."

What finally killed put Hot Wheels over the top -- and here is where their high-tech suspension came into its own -- was the Hot Wheels track. Those orange, flexible, probably toxic strips advertised on Saturday-morning TV where you and your wide-mouthed friends would be amazed at how fast they let your Hot Wheels zing through loop-de-loops and "esses." Matchboxes just couldn't keep up. Their iron axles ground to a halt at the bottom of every speed ramp, and you'd have to shove them through the loop, like spaghetti through a straw. I suppose that would get them approval from the Consumer Product Safety Constriction today, as even simulated fast-moving cars might inspire youngsters to fantasize about driving upside-down.

all of which adds up to my latest tactic for avoiding the tax return, due Monday. It's not mine; it's my parents. As you may know, Dad passed away in October and Mom isn't up to filling out complex forms. Fortunately, TaxCut allows me to file more than one return with the same software, and I found the records intact and the filing simple. They'll get it all back, which is appropriate in the year of one's death, though I don't think it's automatic.

This year, my family and my parents paid no income tax. I wonder who did?

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 08:45 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 1008 words, total size 6 kb.

Local developers learned a few years ago that they could pick up marginal, inner-suburban properties for under $200,000 and build $600,000 McCastles on them. They sell so fast, they practically have people moving in while the doors are getting hung.

Of course, when nearby owners see this happening, they get optimistic about their own properties and start asking much higher prices. The boom slows, and you get a neighborhood of juxtaposition: two-storey stone façades looking down on postwar clapboard.

Many observers view this with dismay. The poor people are getting moved out by the rich, they say, in tones that suggest there's bullying.

I don't automatically see it that way, particular if the "poor" bought the house for $70,000 some years back and are looking at the biggest single chunk of income they'll ever have. (Some are tenants, of course, and won't see a dime.)

I have lived among poor people, and because of my experiences with them, I do not automatically sympathize with some perceived plight. While many of the poor live in dignity, a significant number do not.

• They stay up late yelling at each other loud enough to wake the neighbors.
  
• They paint their houses—when they do paint their houses—in garish colors with no regard for adjacent property values.
  
• Their children and pets roam the neighborhood, including others' property.
  
• Eventually their children steal anything not locked up, to parental indifference.
  
• In the wee hours, they find it necessary to drive all the way to their door with music blasting.
  
• They park broken-down vehicles on their property for months or years at a time, typically until fines are threatened.
  
• They do not use garbage bags. Rather, they dump waste directly into the plastic bin and leave it open. Vermin ensue.
  

You think it's just the rich people who move the poor people out? It works both ways. Poor people who act like this drive out anyone with enough money to escape. Those without the means to move, suffer.

Also please note that none of the behaviors listed above are driven by poverty. They are choices. Even the affluent make bad choices. But in all the places I've resided, it's always been the poor people behaving so badly that they make living near them unbearable.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 05:41 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 380 words, total size 3 kb.

If I die famous and beloved, my sole wish is that nobody name a highway after me.

This occurred to me driving IH-30 between Dallas and Fort Worth. Every few miles, enormous signs proclaim this the "Tom Landry Highway."

What a memorial. We loved him so much, we named a butt-ugly gash in the landscape after him.

this isn't about tom landry, God rest his soul. It's about politicians and their lazy, cheap exploitation of sentiment.

In Landry's case, a well-known, upstanding local man died, and people felt sad about that. Happens every time someone we all "know" passes. Then this wave of "we gotta do something" rolls over the town. Politicians look for a way to ride that wave.

Naming an object is the kind of thing they can get behind. They show up for the ribbon-cutting with lots of handshakes and sincere nodding. I bet they can even get a family member or two to show up, the better for legitimizing this, the rubber bracelet of photo ops.

In the case of the Tom Landry Highway, an unpleasant stretch of real estate got a new name. (Oh, and because it already existed, we didn't have to spend any new money. Bonus!) Any hobo trudging along that highway's barren shoulder, sidestepping the cigarette butts, failed retreads, and fast-food wrappers can look up, see the sign, and think, Wow, these people must have hated Tom Landry.

I mean, I never knew Mr. Stemmons, R.L. Thornton, Marvin D. Love, Julius Schepps. Somehow I imagine those who wanted to honor Harry Hines never suspected his name would come to be synonymous with "prostitution." Thank God no one named North Central Expressway after someone. He'd have been cursed 100,000 times a day, forever.

Look at Cullum Lane, if you can find it on a map. It's the nastiest little street in Dallas County. Gravel-shouldered, short enough to walk end-to-end in August without breaking a sweat. Nothing bears its address but vacant lots. The final insult: it tees into Harry Hines. We must have hated Mr. Cullum, too.

if you want something named after you, and you don't want it to be something ugly or pedestrian, you have to donate a lot of money. No matter how much Dallas loved Tom Landry, it would never have named a new symphony hall after him, even if his death had been timely enough to allow it. No, that honor went to the money man, Morton Meyerson, and that's fine. It takes enormous amounts of capital to raise a building, and it only fits that Meyerson's name went on that one. The sad thing is, Landry's work affected far more people than Meyerson's, and all Landry got was a bunch of signage alongside a utility.

In Delaware (and many other places, but I single out Delaware because I've been there), they have a Vietnam Veterans Memorial Highway. It's another smelly, hot wound in the landscape, source of noise and commuter irritation, and to top it off it runs through a swamp. (Excuse me: "wetland.") A lousy tribute to men who mostly didn't volunteer but went along to fight a war that ended up making the U.S. look impotent.

I guess one argument to the contrary would be that memorial titles are essentially the "naming rights" of these highways, ensuring we will refer to the deceased in our daily discourse. But I don't recall any traffic report in Wilmington, Del., describing action on the "Vietnam Veterans Highway": It was "I-95," as it had been for decades. Even if we come to know I-30 (which used to be "the toll road") as "the Tom Landry," is that how he deserves to register in our daily conversation?

We should name ornery things after people who've earned it. The Lee Harvey Oswald Landfill. Walker Railey Sewage Treatment Plant. Al Lipscomb Vehicle Recovery Lot.

Somehow I can't picture as many politicians at those ribbon-cuttings.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 06:24 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 657 words, total size 5 kb.

I began the day in Baltimore, and concluded it in Dallas. No matter how often I travel, I've never gotten used to that. Humans were meant to start and stop their day within a 20 mile radius. One thousand miles is like taking the transporter, rearranging a man's molecules and befuddling his sense of place.

Upon return home, I immediately set about reaffirming my eccentricity for all the neighbors. This had begun Friday, when I braved the rain to start tearing gutters off the abandoned house down the block. With permission, of course, but I couldn't well go around to all the neighbors and knock on their doors to establish my alibi. And, in Friday's rain, with my hood on, I apparently looked like the stereotypical home-salvage thief, and that's the feedback my wife got from the neighbors ("Did you hear someone tried to steal the gutters off that house last week?"), and it was all we could do to stifle our laughter.

Sunday's unintentional comedy came from Squinx's efforts to help.  She's solidly in the 36-40 inch demographic, but insisted on carrying something from the teardown to our house.  Hefting a length of downspout, I judged it within her capabilities, and off we went.

It didn't occur to me that she would not locate the midpoint of the piece and lift it there.  Instead, she picked up one end and shouldered the rest.  She looked like an ant carrying a maple leaf.  Squeeky captured the moment on film.

Now I have about 60 feet of gutter lying in the backyard.  And, alas, Big Box Home Improvement Corp. just offered me a $100 gift card if I buy more insulation.  The attic is not yet finished.  Is life long enough for all this?

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 08:45 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 296 words, total size 2 kb.