Calling a truce in the War of the Ferns

Dec. 6, 2001

Dear Julie,

Five hundred years after England's Wars of the Roses, DC and I have been engaged in the War of the Ferns. Ironically, it began with an act of compassion.

DC was trying to resuscitate two plants that accidentally caught a chill. She hung them on the shower curtain tubing that runs above our bathtub. In theory, the warm moist air creates an environment ferns love. Everybody knows that.

I didn't mind stooping to get in and out of the tub. But these ferns are not healthy. They shed leaves. I did mind bathing with dead fern leaves and having to clean them out of the bathtub afterward, so I removed the ferns from their place on high.

I, I asserted to myself, ought to have more rights than ferns do.

DC doesn't see it that way. She defended the ferns' rights to life and a sauna. She even tried to convince me that bathing with dead leaves was like steeping myself in an herbal bath.

Then she returned the ferns to their favorite spot.

That's how wars start. People and countries keep moving the ferns. In her current mood, I knew she would keep right on moving them so I gave up. Giving up isn't the same is giving in. There are worse things than bathing with ferns.

DC has been grumpy lately. Her list of people she doesn't like has been growing. She dislikes the people who run the stereo business that brags it has the loudest speakers in town. She dislikes a supervisor at the university where she teaches and she dislikes one of her students. Teachers aren't supposed to dislike students, but this one values her grades more than her patients.

I was on the list of people she dislikes until I painted the dining room windows on the rental house this week.

She doesn't think I dislike enough people. She thinks I should be more discerning.

Most wars don't start with bombs or even weapons. They start with disliking.

Sometimes South Lorimier Street has felt like living in a war zone. We have been assaulted by loud stereos, squealing tires, honking horns and verbally abusive neighbors, not to mention the odd killing that occurs from time to time. Since we moved in five years ago, the count is two dead within 100 yards of our house.

But recently and without fanfare, peace seems to have been declared. Lately when we come home we wonder if we're in the right neighborhood. Most of the thundering car stereos that used to rattle our stained glass windows have gone elsewhere. We have good government to thank.

When the City Council forced a nearby bar to close because the police were breaking up more fights than Jerry Springer's henchmen, the late-night traffic around our house dissipated dramatically. About the same time, the city stopped cars from parking beside Indian Park, which is next door to our house. More thunder disappeared.

"It's actually quiet," DC says in wonder some nights.

That's not all. The managers of the apartment building across the street have dolled it up with red and green paint. Christmas decorations have appeared on the building this year for the first time in memory.

With us painting our rental house and John and Judy on the other side erecting a new porch, the neighborhood almost looks industrious. Painting and building create a positive mood. We all need some of that right now.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian