"Quiet on the Set, Please!"

Let us take a temporary respite from posts about the fire....We will return to this topic, especially with some anecdotes about past events at the doomed house on The Sack. Right now, however, we need a break from fire related matters....

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On a windless summer night, when residents have retired to their homes, The Sack almost resembles a carefully constructed movie set. In the soft light of the street lamps, the homes look clean and well-maintained. Lawns and front gardens look almost manicured.

From the sky, The Sack would appear in the shape of a keyhole. The street is long and narrow until it reaches a circle. In the middle of the circle, there are some trees and a few large, ornamental rocks. Residents have planted a small, well-maintained garden among the trees.

When the wind is still and there are no cars or people moving about, The Sack can easily seem as if erected on a sound stage somewhere in Hollywood. The effect is even more pronounced on a foggy evening (and we get more than a few of those here), as the rest of the world disappears from beyond The Sack. At times like this, it is a beautiful place, indeed....

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My most excellent friend (and fellow resident of The Sack) is Oscar.

Oscar and I have spent many nights enjoying ale and 'witty repartee' (as Oscar would say), while casually reclining on my front steps. It was from this vantage point that we first discovered the movie set analogy described above. In fact, Oscar has often commented about how The Sack resembles the streets and houses shown in Pleasantville, a 1998 film starring Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon.

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Just like the movies, however, The Sack is merely an illusion. It has as many faces as it does residents. This, I think, is what makes it such a fascinating place to observe....

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