Point of View: Tradesmen’s Lives
That some people find the evidence of tradesmen’s lives in the blue-collar section of town offensive is puzzling.
We’ll never make Springs Sagaponack no matter how hard we try, nor should we want to. Uniformity, whether in the form of grandiose mansions or too tidy half-acre lots, seems to me to be the real offense.
Springs used to be celebrated for its diversity (for its admixture of farmers and clammers and artists). Now apparently it is not, conformity being ever on the march.
There undoubtedly have been — and are — problems, though it seems to me talking with neighbors ought to be the first recourse. Those who are up in arms may well say that it is not my ox that is being gored, which is true, though it was not long ago that the house next door was overflowing with tenants in the embrace of a gouging landlord, hard workers all, trying to make the best of it.
It being a case of “there but for fortune . . .” we sympathized, and were friendly. I redoubled my efforts to learn Spanish, and it was I who had to be asked once to please turn the music down.
A foreclosure sale and an ambitious renovation followed, the tenants scattered to the wind, and what was once a nice-looking house on the outside but not inside is home to a nuclear family from the city.
All by way of saying that the new town administration ought to be diplomatic when it comes to enforcing laws and codes that present-day reality and cultural differences may have to some extent supervened.
Yes, it would be good if a balance were struck, but I’ll take a little untidiness, as it were, over a too neat porch.