I’m writing this story on July 5th, the day after my neighborhood, despite the drought and the early fire season, engaged in multiple-hour acts of civil disobedience, setting off nonstop fireworks, some of which were just as loud as the professional official exhibitions put on by the city.
All I could think was how unsafe I felt, unsafe and as if I was living in a conclave of kooks who literally haven’t grokked the fact that we’re in the very beginning of what might be a ferocious fire season. Hadn’t grokked it or just didn’t care because they felt entitled. Above the law. Their house couldn’t burn down. Things like that just don’t happen to them.
I felt so miserably alone, as if I was just about the only sane one left living here, as though my neighbors had become strangers to me, as separated from reason as Trump followers, climate deniers, and anti vaxers. There was no longer any common ground. I no longer felt my home was a safe place. That there was any kind of community. I wondered if there was anyone else alone and worried about a fire breaking out.
Just last summer a pyrotechnic device set off at a party started the El Dorado fire in Southern California, a fire that burned through over 22,000 acres, causing more than 20,000 people to leave their homes. Who are we to think it would be any different here, in a town which borders Mt. Tamalpais and the Golden Gate National Seashore?
I thought this year would be really low-key, as my town had canceled its annual fireworks show (though San Francisco went ahead with their event). I expected my neighbors to get it. I expected a quiet night.
It was 8:40 when I finally decided to call the local police. The dispatcher said they were inundated with calls from residents asking that something be done about the fireworks and that they had multiple cars out on patrol. When things hadn’t gotten any quieter by 9:30, I started not trusting my local police force, imaging them hanging out in their cars at the nearby shopping center because, after all, most of the people who live here have big bucks. The cops just might be turning a blind eye to it. I even, for a minute, imagined them hanging out at one of the parties, maybe setting off a few themselves. Because after January 6th, that doesn't seem quite as improbable. But there were other people complaining at least. That made me feel better.
My daughter called about 9:30 and I asked her how it was there. She lives in an Hispanic neighborhood in the East Bay. Last year, her first in the house, neighbors had started with the fireworks a week ahead of time. Her dogs had a hellish time of it. This year, she said, there were very few. She thinks it's because people were fined last year and she lives in a poor neighborhood where folks can’t afford a $1,000 citation.
That’s not the case here in Marin, so prosperous a county, where the fine is a little over $400, and most of the people who still live here spend that on a pair of shoes without giving it a second thought.
The whole situation makes me more aware of how I just no longer belong in this town. My girlfriend texted this morning and said she and her husband are looking into selling and moving further up north, something I don’t feel comfortable doing, what with the fire danger being worse up there. But even up in central Marin, a small 2-bedroom can run close to $2 million.
I mean, sure, I recall when I was a little girl how my dad would always come home with a stash of illegal fireworks and all the kids in the neighborhood knew to come by when the sun went down. I remember one time the police even came by and gave him a warning. That was all he needed (That year, anyway) to put them away. But that was back on the east coast in the late 50s and 60s. We were just a middle-class family living the dream. Climate change wasn’t even a twinkling in our eyes. And we certainly didn’t have catastrophic forest fires every summer and never lived through a drought.
The other day I was leaving my yoga class when a man opened the door of a gleaming Porsche sports car beside my dirty Prius. Who gets car washes during a drought? People with Porsches, obviously.
“You got a drought car?” I tried to joke with him. He just grunted and got behind the wheel.
Living in a drought means 2-minute showers, not running a wash until your plum out of clothes, watering your plants with dishwater. One develops a consciousness about every drop of water you use. At least, you do if you don’t own a Porsche, I guess.
So I’m wondering if there is a connection here. Were the people who drive the hoity-toity cars in my community the same people who were setting off fireworks? And the answer has to be I guess so because when I drive out this morning and look, I notice most of the cars on the blocks around me are expensive. Sparkling clean.
I’ve gotta get out of this place. Just don’t know where to go.
Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share a virtual kitchen table with other readers of Daily Kos who aren’t throwing pies at one another. Drop by to talk about music, your weather, your garden, or what you cooked for supper…. Newcomers may notice that many who post in this series already know one another to some degree, but we welcome guests at our kitchen table and hope to make some new friends as well.