No Way to Turn

I usually have to drive around town to chase the news, but for the past three weeks, the mountain has come to Mohammad as they say.

I live on a short street in Greenacres that runs between Walworth and Greenacres Avenue. To give you an idea of just how short it is, there are only six houses on each side of the street, all on lots of about 1/3 acre. This bucolic byway, which is usually quiet and empty, has become a major construction site. Every morning a parade of backhoes, pick-up trucks, dump trucks and cars converge. We wake up to the earth shaking vibrations of the back hoes picking up and dropping large steel plates that cover deep open trenches in the roadway.

What’s up?

Though it looks like they are installing the Alaska pipeline, we’re told Con Edison is putting in new gas lines throughout Greenacres. We lived through a similar project that blocked Walworth Avenue for much of the earlier part of 2022 and now they have creeped right up to our door.

When and if I decide to leave home, I need to get out of the car at the top of the driveway, find a Con Ed worker and ask which way it might be possible to exit the block. At the north end, in addition to the work on my street, the same operation is in progress on Greenacres Avenue and a portion of that road is also blocked off. So in order to drive toward Scarsdale Village, I have to do a half mile loop up and around toward White Plains.

Last week, the Con Edison workers struck the street’s water main. That was even more exciting. Emergency vehicles sped to the street in an attempt to stop the flow and our water was turned off for about four hours as the Village worked to repair the pipe.

And if this wasn’t enough fun, in the midst of the chaos, I looked out my back window the other morning to see a police officer speaking to a gardener who was holding a leafblower. Shoot! It was a Monday and the gardener was breaking a new law that says gas leaf blowers can only be used Tuesdays- Fridays. I wondered how the policewoman had traversed the pipes, deep holes and blocked street to find her way into my yard.

Two weeks later I also received a summons in the mail for the same leaf blower violation.

So now, if I can get out of my driveway, I will need to get out of my pajamas for a court appearance in early January to speak to the judge about the summons.

The timing seems rather unfortunate. We’ve lost the use of our street, water service was off and they choose now to issue us a violation for clearing the leaves? I guess no one is above the law … except of course Con Edison.