Less Travelled

I'm an alley cat, driving slow past the rain puddles, splashing past the trash and the treasures. It's not the pretty side. It's the other side, the hidden side. It's my side.

Come, all you alley cats, join me on the back road, the one off the back yard, the back-up road, the road we all need to get back to.

I left the streets long ago. Couldn't stand them anymore. Everything was too neat, too pretty, too sanitized, too predictable and presentable.

Reality awaits out back. Driving 10 miles an hour, staring at the back yards, the garages, the garbage cans, the debris, and soon the laundry hanging on the line. And the toys, the random wooden boards, ramps, bikes, and those worn items people want to toss out. The tires, the brush, the old Christmas tree browning in the sun, the stove that doesn't work anymore, pieces of one's life, fading, sure as we all are.

Meet me in the alley. Join me in viewing this city of ours from a new vantage point, with a new perspective. Join me where the roads aren't perfect, where they narrow and dip, and force you to slow down and think about every 30-yard stretch. I peek inside garages, spot people in kitchen windows staring at the birds. I drive by the old noble carriage houses, the garages with the second-floor workshops, the yards with the small pond or the tree house high in the oak. All the things that are part of a private world.

I drove the well-paved streets for years. They served their purpose. I found addresses easy enough, spotted lawn care services at work, embraced the prettified, citified landscaping,

But I grew to long for something more, something different. Surprises. And the surprises were waiting in back, in the alleys, those wonderful paths that are there to be wandered sure as any city street.

In the alleys I see where the living is done, the projects and the vegetable gardens, the basketball courts and the old beat up single car garages with the kids hiding up in the rafters. I find treasures. There's an Adirondack chair being thrown out just because it has a broken leg. That can be repaired. There's an extension ladder being tossed because one section has a bum rung. Nonsense, there are 22 solid rungs.

The trees and bushes in the alley aren't trimmed, they grow the way they want to grow. They're left alone. It's a secret world back there, an unexpected and wondrous world, one few think anyone will see. If the people only knew some of us were taking those alleys like tour buses, they'd alter and improve and review and rearrange. But that would ruin it all. The view in the alley is cluttered and messy, making it real and wonderful.

So come join me in the alley. It's dirty and tilting, cracked and crumbling, quaint and simple, the sun shines on it all. It's crooked and broken, sweet and graceful. The moon rises over it, blesses it, and the birds sing, and the the air swirls. It's where living unfolds. And I'd miss it if I did things all proper.

Come home to the alleys. I'm waiting there, by a lilac bush, looking at a perfectly good book shelf someone is tossing out, watching a raccoon run from a trash bin. I'm bump, bump, bumping over the pot holes, smiling.

And I'm never going back to the front roads. Never.