Who Are The People In Your Neighborhood

I live on a pretty quiet, rural street. OK, at one end there is a state prison, but we'll just ignore that part for now. That's about 3 miles down from where I actually live, anyway.

So, on my street there are two horse farms, one dairy farm, and three sod fields. Also, there's an air park. Do you know what this is? I didn't, before I moved here. An air park is a place where really rich people live. It's a private landing strip, with houses on either side of it. Every house has a hangar complete with a private airplane.

Sounds like a nice neighborhood, right? That's what I thought, too. But in the last two weeks, just two houses down from us, there's been a huge drug bust and a four-alarm fire (believe it or not, it was two separate occasions but happened at the same house).

We weren't home when the drug bust happened, but our neighbors told us about it. Evidently, there was a SWAT team parked in the ditch in front of our house, a bomb squad vehicle was parked in the neighbor's ditch, and the roads were blocked off by emergency vehicles. Turns out, the house was a "holding house" for drugs, and they found $15,000 worth of cash plus hundreds of thousands dollars' worth of drugs. The police told us, if you're going to have a drug house in your neighborhood, a holding house is the kind you want, because they don't attract a lot of scummy criminals to the area. Thank you, but I think I'd prefer option c: no drug house in the neighborhood.

Then, four days later in the same house, there was a huge fire. I have no idea what caused the fire, since by that point, the house had been cleared out, but again the entire road was blocked by fire engines, police cars, ambulances, etc. The fire started at 7:00 p.m., and when I went to bed at 11:00, most of the emergency vehicles were still there, although it looked at that point like the fire was pretty much out.

It's scary to think that things like that happen all the time, even in "nice" neighborhoods. I guess you never can tell who your neighbors are. I actually thought that house was vacant, since I hadn' t seen anyone around there for a couple of years.

I can do without that much excitement.