I wish that my life resembled James Rojas’ description of his neighborhood with “front yards [that] are not anonymous spaces upholding a single community identity, but rather exuberant vignettes of the individual owner’s lives” (281). However, I realized that I do not have a lot of firsthand experience with front porches that reveal, rather than conceal the personality of those that live their or neighborly chats over the fence.
Unfortunately chapter seventeen better reflected my life this weekend. I spent Friday night and all Saturday in class while my husband and children were away for the weekend. Without anyone to cook for me or to cook for I decided to indulge in my two favorite things of late: McDonald’s Maple and Fruit Oatmeal and Starbucks’ Salted Chocolate Hot Chocolate for dinner on a lonely Saturday night. Yes, I went to TWO drive-thrus in one twenty minute excursion. Pathetic. I realized how entrenched the drive-in/drive-thru culture is, especially in Boise where city planners anticipated widespread car use. As J. B. Jackson argued, I am a “mobile consumer” who would “think nothing of traveling to a supermarket that has better parking than one located two miles nearer” (297). This chapter on mini-malls really expressed the power of landscape to make changes in our culture. Seeing the progression of house-call making doctors to the variety that allow you to get a strep culture and make copies at Kinko’s on your lunch break really revealed to me how a profession like medicine that used to dwell in impressive and large office buildings, aloof from potential patients, dropped to a mini-mall where high school kids with no formal training can be working at the store next door. This point especially hit me when contrasted with Rojas’ East L.A. neighborhood where the landscape fostered positive development with personality and the feel of community.
Next weekend I will install a lawn ornament (I am leaning toward blue and orange flamingos that I hope will communicate my intense school spirit and love of environmental history) instead of the hitting up the drive-thru.