Writing Prompt: Write down twenty details of your neighborhood block.

The are probably more dogs than people on this dead end street- mutts, Beagles, Collies, Goldens. In every window a dog, just like on every lawn there sits a sign. Reelect the alderman! Boo to the alderman! Everyone has an opinion on politics. Just as I’m sure everyone has an opinion regarding the house on the corner with the prairie lawn. Is it beautiful? Natural? Or just lazy and unmowed? The newest residents to the dead end street have a yard in the exact opposite style. We wonder if the man goes out to measure the grass height when no one is looking.

We miss the old resident who lived there. The grass was not as nice, be he certainly was. He would snowblow our alley skirt sometimes, and wave hello to the dogs. He was very proud of his Christmas decorations, and he even painted his favorite reindeer on the garage door. He died though, after living a life that had to have reached nearly ninety years. The reindeer left the house when he did, painted over white and bland and forgotten. Christmas isn’t forgotten though. Other neighbors still have their lights up. We reckon at this point they’ll just keep them strung year round. At least they don’t turn them on. The lights would be just as distracting at the rattling flagpole that shakes so loud in the strong wind that we have to sleep with earplugs.

It’s a good street, a nice, quiet, dead end street. You can barely even hear the trains that separate the road from its other half to the south. The dogs hear them though, the twenty odd dogs with their twenty odd barks. They will tell you all about the trains.