To Grandma's House
by Ken Mayer

As you go over the river and through the woods to be with family this month, I ask that you take a look around.

My grandma’s house was east of 52nd Street in Omaha. There was a porch in front and a garage and alley in back where cars were kept and trash was picked up. The neighbors knew each other, helped each other out and reported my bad behavior. It was life in people scale.

The modern grandma’s house features a facade often dominated by garages with a strip of pavement nearly as wide as a two-lane highway in the front yard. Trash goes on display at the curb once a week, and the porch is in back, often secluded from the neighbors. It’s life in car scale.

Certainly things are easier these days. We subject ourselves to the elements less, lift and carry groceries less, and generally benefit from labor-saving technology. But, in my opinion, the solutions to these technical problems have done little for our hearts and minds.

As you take that ride to have a turkey dinner and engage in the warmth of your relatives and friends, look out the car window and consider life in car scale versus people scale.

Sometimes I think about this by imagining that I’m from another planet. The blue-green orb third out from the star at the center of the solar system is attractive, and the activity on its surface seems interesting, so I decide to have a look. As I get closer I notice lots of areas covered by gray or black hard, flat surfaces that the inhabitants move around on. They seem to have service personnel inside them who care for their needs, like feeding them by pumping fluid into a port on their sides. It seems clear from the patterns that they are at the center of this world because everything is built around them. Oddly, much of their bodily waste is blown into the atmosphere or just drips onto the pavement.

I approach one who appears to be resting and attempt to communicate. No response. I move closer and try again, a bit louder. The inhabitant makes a series of honking and shrieking noises that I can’t understand. I give up in frustration and decide to look for more interesting planets to explore.

Besides amusing myself with this little confuse-an-alien fantasy, it seems to me that we may have gone a bit overboard with this car scale thing. You see, lots of pavement collects rain water that would normally soak into the ground. It then mixes with the oil and other junk excreted by cars and runs into our rivers and streams.

Our asphalt and concrete are also major contributors to what’s called the “heat island” effect. Paved land absorbs energy from the sun and radiates it back, which is distinctly different than land covered in shade from vegetation. Vegetation absorbs the energy of the sun and transforms a large portion of it into more vegetation for, say, sweet potato casserole.

Maybe I’m just being nostalgic, but I think grandma and grandpa may have gotten it right. Cars and garbage in back, people in front. Life in people scale was the turkey and dressing that nourished their hearts and minds all year round.

Happy Thanksgiving!