OF PICKUPS AND PIDDLY RULES

Last Tuesday's Dallas Morning News carried a story about a man, Jim Greenwood, in the Stonebriar neighborhood in Frisco, whose "neighbors" have objected to his 2007 Ford F-150 pickup being parked on his driveway. It seems it doesn't meet the "upscale" standards of the Homeowners Association. Big honking SUVs are okay, but not this late-model pickup. According to a man named Bill Osborn, a board member with the HOA, the SUVs are "fancier" and "plush with amenities". Therefore, presumably, they're acceptable, in spite of the fact that they're as big as a Sherman tank. The board states that Mr. Greenwood must keep his truck in his garage.

The truck, apparently, is driven by Mr. Greenwood's teenage son. The family also has a car and a Suburban, and a two-car garage. Which one of the three would you park on the driveway? All three vehicles probably leave in the morning and return in the evening, with those driven by the parents most likely remaining in the garage therafter. If the boy is like most teenagers, the truck probably also leaves and returns in the evening. It seems logical for the truck to be the outside vehicle, to avoid a lot of shifting of cars.

I'm sorry, folks, but this seems like a reeaaally nit-picky issue, and I think the HOA needs to grow up. So there is a late-model, nice pickup truck parked on a driveway. This is Texas, dear hearts! Get over it.

You think you have problems? You should drive down my street in the evening, every evening. We don't have a Homeowners Association. I wish we did. My street is extra wide, and the houses are set back at least ten feet farther from the street than the city requires. My father built almost every house on the street, and he planned it so it would be open and roomy, and wouldn't look crowded and congested. Well, I'm glad he can't see it now.

There are cars parked on the street in front of more than half the houses. One house sports five cars, one has six, and one has at least eight and sometimes more. There are four lined up on the double-wide driveway, and the other four are in the street. They were parked in the yard until somebody complained loudly enough. Now they're on the street, and one van has been in the same spot, with a flat tire, for weeks. I can only wish that they were nice late-model pickups. No, most of them look like they were built by kids out of junk-yard parts. Fenders or doors that don't match, missing bumpers, and one has a cardboard window.

Now here's another issue. Eight cars presupposes that there are eight licensed (?) drivers in that house. That would be eight adults, right? There are also five or six young children, obviously not drivers, living there. In addition, I've seen some young women walking around the neighborhood in the evening, but have never seen them drive a car. I'm thinking that there are at least sixteen people living there, maybe more. This is a single family dwelling. Looking at these numbers, I can only conclude that there is more than one family living there, or if not, then the parents need to kick some grown kids out of the nest.

My best guess is that these folks are illegal immigrants. They appear to be Hispanic, and the only language I've ever heard any of them speak is Spanish. I tried once to speak to one of the young women on her evening walk, and she only smiled and nodded, with a blank look on her face. It appears to me that there are several families, pooling their resources, in order to afford to live in that house. I've noticed also that some of the cars seem to disappear now and then, but are soon replaced by different cars. Impounded? Someone went back to Mexico and someone else came in? Who knows?

They finally quit having their front-yard parties, with kegs and boomboxes and people sitting around in and on the cars. They moved to the back yard after enough neighbors complained, but the music is still heard, late on a Saturday night.

I fully recognize and acknowledge that situations like this are the very reason for having a Homeowners Association. As I said, I wish we had one. We need one, because it's obvious to one and all that the City of Irving is not going to do one piddling thing to enforce whatever zoning laws we may have. It's too bad we don't have anyone living on the street who has any political clout in town. If we did, I'll bet those old zoning laws would be trotted out and put to work, at least in this case. I wish we had a city government with the integrity to police situations like this, but we don't.

Since we don't, I wish we had a Homeowners Association, but we don't have that either. I suppose it's too late to form one now, though perhaps that needs to be investigated. If we do manage to charter one, I would certainly hope that we will frame it in such a way that it addresses real issues, not stupid little things like somebody parking a 2007 Ford F-150 on their driveway.