Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Will County Rant

Usually this blog is about me explaining something or discussing politics but today I will vent so just hear me out. This is for my neighbors, that’s right Broken Arrow subdivision & the city of Lockport, this one’s for you.
This is all about being responsible and common sense (or the lack there of), you hear people talk about having values, we hear it at work constantly, you hear politicians say it (but not live it), I don’t buy it, values my black foot, call it what it is, being a responsible adult, here we go.
So today is trash day, now remember I’ve spent the vast majority of my life in the city of Chicago, so this whole thing of rolling out a trash can to the curb and having a second can for recycled stuff is new to me.
See in the city we have these things called alleys, little streets in between the blocks and that’s how you get in and out of your garage and where your garbage can is permanently located and the garbage men come down the alley and empty the garbage cans (plus you can leave your bulk items out there and the scrap man will come get it), nothing for recycled stuff (it all goes in the garbage can), just one or more cans filled to the rim with trash, sometimes your neighbors run out of room and put their trash in your cans, that’s fine, you’ll do the same to them the next week, the south side way.
Now I’m sure the reason suburbs don’t have alleys is because although no one lives in alleys (well unless you count rats, bums, stray dogs and cats), they are nasty, dark, smelly and nothing good happens back there but at least your garbage can stays out there and isn’t like mine, stanking up the garage while I wait for trash day to take that disgusting thing out. Because of course in our subdivision there are rules about only having the cans out on trash day or the night before.
So last night it stormed like hell out by us and some of my neighbors (yeah I’m talking to you, the Hoffmans who live next door to me), put the trash out last night and of course the storm whipped their garbage all over my lawn and down the street. Not to mention that old couch they put out there as well.
See where we live there is bulk pick up for trash (it was only once a year in the city, you could find some good stuff out in the alley that week), but you have to call to arrange a bulk pick up. I doubt if that dense, music blasting moron with his three wild kids and constantly screaming wife that lives next door to me did that. So now there’s an old nasty couch in his driveway bring down my property value, thanks idiot.
But they weren’t the only ones who didn’t think and put out trash, boxes and bags out and then a windy thunderstorm hits, hey genius, check the 6 P.M. news, look at Tom Skilling on Facebook, check your phone, there’s weather updates everywhere, that way the next morning the rest of us don’t have to drive through an obstacle course of rubbish through the subdivision, bunch of bozos.
And now we are gonna get deep in the crap, literally. I don’t own a dog, never have but maybe later on but how hard is it to pick up after him? The golf course we live on is not your animals toilet, granted I don’t play golf but I know some of the guys up there (its where we had our wedding reception), but I eat up there (the food is awesome and a good deal), we also vote up there and have homeowners association meeting there too.
Look, just take a Jewel bag with you and pick up after your dog so my back yard isn’t a mine field of dog droppings. Some people just walk their dog around the subdivision (or let him run free), and let this animal drop duces the whole way out and back to their place and the rest of us have to smell it and deal with it. Really is it that hard, group of jackwagons.
Back when I lived in the city I had someone use my front yard for their dogs commode, it was messing with my lawnmower & wrecking my boots. Finally I caught her one day and told her, if I saw her and the dog in my yard one more dagone time, I was gonna go to her front yard and use the bathroom myself (number 2), right then & there. That ended that problem.
But people are so sensitive where we live they’d probably call the cops on me.
And on to the homeowners association (HOA), so this is a new concept to me too, in the city you have block club, a few concerned people and they put a silly sign at the end of the street but throw a great summer party where we all bring out our grills and cook in the street and kids play everywhere and then play music late into the night, pretty cool.
HOA not so much, first no one goes to the meetings (granted I missed the last two), and we have 87 units in the HOA and usually 4-5 people show up and of that, 3-4 are just there to gripe about what I spent the last page ranting about. That’s not what HOA meeting is about, you have beef with someone or something, call the property management  company who will relay it to the HOA board, call the cops, hell call me I’ll go over there and whoop someone’s behind but don’t bust up HOA meeting because of some okey doke that should be handled some other time. HOA meeting is for serious homeowner business, it’s not your sounding wall for your neighborly issues, as my dad says “Take your problems to the Lord”.
Okay this last part is for our town, that wonderful fair city of Lockport. Its town motto should be the “Village of Deferred Maintenance “. I don’t know why we even have a public works department, they define “city worker” (Streets & Sanitation guys in Chicago could learn something from these guys), a few street patches here, but street lights out, pavement all busted up and the worst water in Will County.
Have you been to my place and seen that liquid coming out of the faucet? You should see how my dishwasher looks and the dishes in it. The dishes go in cleaner than they come out, man spots for days, a pack of Dalmatian Dogs has less spots than my dishes. That water is country bad, see coming from Chicago (who has the best water in the world,) and then coming to this. I had to be told about salt and the water softner, I’m still trying to figure out how that works and water is so bad in our area, every gas station, convenience store and grocery store sells salt for the softner.
But the city didn’t upgrade the wells (one went out a few months back), and now they are in EPA violation and have to upgrade and our water bills have doubled. It would be cheaper to buy Lake Michigan water from Oak Lawn or New Lenox but our city likes to keep it cheap and do things themselves. Hence they didn’t do maintenance because it was cheaper not to, they actually admitted that.
Try that with your own house, don’t fix stuff because its expensive and then what, when you do have to make repairs , its than much higher. I don’t know how the city leaders feed and clothe themselves with that intellect or lack there of.
Thanks for hearing me out, next time we’ll get back to serious issues. Hey by the way, if I haven’t convinced you how great my area is, the house next door to me is for sale (no not the clown with the couch in the driveway and the garbage in the street, this is on the other side of me), then you get to hear me rant all the time.

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