I don't like manufactured neighborhoods -- those manicured little developments that spring up in suburbs nowadays. I find the militant cleanliness of such neighborhoods more than a little creepy. I get uncomfortable when I'm walking past immaculate house after immaculate house, where such houses are often of identical design to the one next door, and where such houses are so big and shoehorned onto such tiny lots that the distance between one house and the next could be spanned by fewer than three Shaquille O'Neal's laid end-to-end. And I especially don't like when these perfectly manicured developments wherein the presence of a single dandelion in a lawn triggers a meeting of the Homeowner's Association and, if it's a second offence, a shunning that would make the Amish proud, is centered around a manmade lake whose perimeter is dotted with miniature trees. These kinds of places always strike me as terribly inauthentic, as if the people who live there would really rather be living in that town where they filmed The Truman Show and they just didn't have enough money to get it there or something.
Anyway, I'm not sure if the neighborhood mentioned in this article is one of those neighborhoods or not, but I have my suspicions. I just find it kind of funny that a neighborhood's manmade lake just drained away in a single night. Mother Nature has so many ways to give us the occasional kick in the ass, doesn't she?
The personal blog of author Kelly Sedinger, chronicling the adventures of one overalls-clad wanderer.
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