I have had a lifelong horror of suburban living. Stemming from an early childhood trapped in a brand spanking new California 'cracker-box' housing development ... an instant suburb built for US servicemen and their newly nucleated families.

 

Living in those early housing estates was like dwelling in an earthbound moon colony. The lanes devoid of adult street-life, and signs of life - if detectable at all - taking place in the 'rumpus rooms', back yards, or double garages. 

 

Many of our house-wife mothers, whose primary occupation was child rearing, clustered together in  dining rooms and breakfast nooks during the day. Convening lengthy gab fests - fueled by coffee and diet pills. Supermarket-impulse-aisle displyed tablets and capsules containing Benzedrine and Dexedrine Sulfate. 

 

The children ran in unsupervised packs - on bicycles and barefoot across dog-turd studded summer lawns. Boomers now idealize such childhoods and use their 'shining' example to needle and shame subsequent generations. As if boomer-era suburban street-sense taught my generation anything other than Horror Vacui .

 

For the past 17 years I have lived in a Christchurch Suburb, where I was reminded this morning that the raucous start-up of a weed-whacker is a mating call. Soon summoning the answering whine and combustive rattle of gas lawnmowers, mulch-chippers, leaf-blowers, hedge-trimmers and the inevitable little men wearing Glyphosate back-pack sprayer.