Don’t Even Think of Interacting with this Family!

One of the most obnoxious things about suburbia is the sea of garage doors facing the street. Many people falsely think the objection to the garage doors is simply an aesthetic decision. While looking at a metal door stamped to look like a wood panel door with fake wood grain is certainly offensive to my sense of aesthetics it is not the primary reason I object to such design.

The primary reason is the message it sends. The car is more important to people. My garage is more important than my front porch & front door. Most suburban houses have little or no front porch. The ones that do are often so small it is impossible to sit down with a neighbor and have a conversation. The following is a very personal tale about my childhood in suburbia.

I grew up in a 1960s suburban subdivision in Oklahoma City – my parents were building their home while my mom was pregnant with me. The streets in the former farm field were still being paved when they moved in with my two older brothers. Many of the houses on the street have pretty flat facades – the garage in line with most of the front of the house. Others have the garage more prominent. My parent’s house is an L-shape house with the bedroom wing closer to the street and the garage set back. While this reduces the impact of the garage is certainly creates more driveway. My dad wanted to build the house with a 3-car garage which was a bit unusual at the time but the subdivision rules said no – two car garage only. One car garages & carports, fairly common at the time, were also prohibited.

So we ended up with a two-car garage but a driveway that could hold nine cars. You read it right – nine cars. We could fit three cars deep from garage door to curb and three cars wide since we had extra width. At various times we had quite a few cars so you can imagine how it looked – like a used car lot.

The builder of the house next door did a sidewalk which still looks silly since no other house on the street has a sidewalk. My grade school was within the subdivision and just over a half mile walking distance or biking distance. I think my mom dropped me off & picked me up when I was in kindergarden and the first few years but I recall walking & biking to school in the 4th grade. But, the subdivision had no sidewalks except in the newest areas which were built in the late 70s. Walking and interacting was very limited in the subdivision.

Back to the next door neighbor with the lone sidewalk in the first area of the subdivision. The wife worked downtown. She’d pull her Continental out of her garage and drive to the parking garage at her office. After work she’d return and pull back in the garage. Interaction on the street was usually limited to times when mowing grass, pulling weeds, retrieving trash cans or getting the paper. I’d see her mostly when I was next door visiting my friend who was a year younger than me.

I do have some very positive memories of my early childhood days in the suburbs of Oklahoma City. Four neighbors had in-ground pools and another had a nice above ground pool. I was always a prune in the summer months. Unfortunately, I never learned to swim properly. Before I started biking I had a big wheel which I rode up and down are quiet street. I’d turn around on neighbor’s driveways. Frank & Maxine about six houses up the street were retired and often sitting in chairs in front of their garage. Across the street was Jewel and her husband. She was always running around in her Seville (the latest thing at the time) but her husband was always sitting in a chair smoking a cigar. He was one of the first people that I recall passing away. Their son and his wife lived directly across the street. I thought they were really cool – she was about ten years his junior, they had modern furniture and despite not having any kids they were one of the in-ground pool owners. She drove a Mercury Cougar – the one with the nifty turn signals that flashed progressively in the direction you were turning. He retired while I was in high school but as a fireman he was often off work for a week at a time and you guess it, he was often sitting in a chair in front of his garage door. You see the garage as porch pattern here?

When I turned 16 and got my license I was excited to take the Doge Duster to the older neighborhoods. I’d spend hours exploring some of the great old neighborhoods which are filled with frame craftsman bungalows of the 20s. It was very exciting to see places with large front porches and detached garages accessed by narrow little driveways – Oklahoma City has no alleys.

Over the years when I’d go back home for a visit and the neighbor across the street would talk to me about St. Louis – he recalled visiting St. Louis in the heyday of Gaslight Square. I could put his stories together with old pictures and feel like I was there.

I returned home the Tuesday before Christmas this year to visit my parents. I was eager to see my father who is recovering from a heart attack in October. He was still in the hospital when I last saw him. My oldest brother, 17 years my senior, and his wife were at my parents when I got there – they had arrived the day before from California. My adorable great-niece was with them. The joy of seeing my family was soon saddened. My mom told me the neighbor across the street – a man I had known my entire life – passed away the day before at age 72 – three years younger than my father. His mom, the Seville driving woman is now in her 90s and living in a home. I saw her after the funeral – I helped lift her wheelchair into the house via the garage of course. She looked the same as a remember from my childhood. No parent should ever have to attend the funeral of their child. I’m crying now as I write this – clearly I had developed a bond with neighbors in our less than ideal suburban world.

The suburban garage used as a front porch and the driveway as a wide sidewalk can work provided the owners raise the garage door and put out their chair. Seldom does that happen. Real front porches and streets with sidewalks going to real places is the best way to create community. The garage is a poor substitute.

Cartoonist Derf was gracious enough to grant me permission to publish the following installment of ‘White Middle Class Suburban Man.’

For more of Derf’s work check out his site at Derfcity.com.

Unfortunately, as suburbia evolves from the mid 60s of my childhood to today the prominence of garage doors have increased – as 3-car garages become more of the norm. With people working even more and parents afraid to let their kids walk to school even in the posh suburbs our human interaction is at an all-time low. Email and the web, like garage porches, are no substitute for genuine meetings.

We must build cities for human interaction to build upon our society.

– Steve