That elderly Becker (in fact the retired CEO of a Delaware construction firm) grinned and cocked his white-haired head as if considering the suggestion. And "Hear hear!" duly seconded Joe Barnes.
"But if we do," Matthews went on, "it won't be just to get back to where we were. No sirree! It'll be to build a bigger and better Heron Bay Estates! And here's how." Raising his stout right thumb: "First of, we buy us a couple hundred more acres of cornfields and woodlots, either next door or across the highway or both, for an HBE Phase Two!" Now his thick forefinger: "Then we build us a couple more mid-rise-or-higher condominium complexes and detached-house neighborhoods — to raise our base, know what I mean?" Middle finger: "Plus we build ourselves an Olympic-size indoor pool and spa complex at the Club to use in the cooler months, and maybe even a second golf course on some of that useless preserve acreage of ours that just sits there. Et cetera et cetera: a whole new ball game!"
Tom Hardison it was, for a change, who said, "Sounds about right to me, Mark." Joe Barnes, of course, echoed assent, and there were approving or at least worth-considering nods from Chuck Becker and Stratford realtor Jeff Pitt as Matthews, clearly much pleased with himself, plumped back into his seat and beamed almost defiantly up at Peter Simpson. But "It sure sounds anything but right to me," my Amanda objected, also rising as if to address the gathering at large, but then turning to the podium: "However, instead of just grabbing the floor, I'll ask the chair's permission before I sound of."
Obviously welcoming the return to parliamentary procedure, "Permission granted," Simpson said at once. "Let's hear what you have to say, Amanda."
In her firm but gentle professorial voice, "What I have to say," she declared to the assembly, "is just about a hundred and eighty degrees from what you've just heard." Tucking a lock of gray-brown hair behind her ear, she smiled down at Matthews, who appeared to be studying the spread fingers of his left hand. "I agree with Mark that the catastrophe we-all have suffered can be turned into an opportunity. But in my opinion — and I'm not alone in this — what it's an opportunity for is not to destroy our precious preserve land and adjacent acreage and grow bigger-bigger-bigger, like too many already-overweight Americans—"
"Objection," Mark Matthews complained, and seemed about to rise again from his seat, but didn't.
"Noted but overruled, Mark," Peter declared, and nodded to Amanda to continue.
"Let's imagine instead a very different kind of Heron Bay makeover," my wife proposed. "Given what we all know the future has in store for us with global warming and such, and the critical importance of reducing our carbon emissions and foreign-oil dependency, here's our chance to make HBE a model 'green' community!" The adjective in finger quotes. "Solar panels on every building, plus whatever other energy-saving technologies we can deploy — expensive to start with, but they soon pay for themselves in lower utility bills, and what's bad news for Delmarva Power and Light is good news for the environment. Fewer grass areas to be fertilized and irrigated, instead of more; more preserve instead of less, and natural 'xericulture' landscaping wherever possible, instead of high-maintenance flower beds and shrubbery. Energy-efficient houses and condos, and propane-powered shuttle buses to Stratford and back every hour, like the ones they use in some of our national parks, to cut down on gasoline consumption and car-exhaust emissions every time we need to get into town. What an example we could set for twenty-first-century America!"
"I'll second that," called Debbie Simpson.
"And I'll third it," added Joan Frank. "We might just want to reconsider the whole gated-community concept too, while we're at it, as Mandy suggested last year."
"Whoa-ho-ho!" Jeff Pitt protested, rising from his seat in the audience and, like Mark, not waiting for acknowledgment from the chair: "Excuse me, ladies, but you take this tree-hugging stuff far enough and next thing we know you'll be telling us to donate the whole shebang to the Nature Conservancy instead of rebuilding at all!"
Uneasy chuckles here and there. Unfazed, "Don't think I haven't considered that option, Jeff," Amanda replied: "Collect our insurance payouts and take our casualty-loss deductions and then buy or build in an already-existing population center like Stratford: smart growth instead of suburban sprawl! But I'm trying to be less radical than that: We keep our entry gates and our golf course; we rebuild our beautiful Heron Bay Estates and even keep that pretentious last word of it's name, if that's what most of us want; but we rebuild it more green and eco-friendly, for our own good as well as the planet's! Thank you all for hearing me out."
Your Narrator applauded, proud as usual of his spunky mate, though disinclined to go quite so far as she in the extreme-makeover way. What I'd settle for, frankly, at my age and stage, is to be back with my dear high-mileage Apple desktop in my snug little study in our snug little coach home in HBE's snug little Blue Crab Bight subdivision exactly as it was before Mister Twister hit the Delete button, pecking away my Old-Fart-Emeritus autumn mornings at yet another rambling prose piece while Amanda, in her snug little et cetera, invokes the Muse of Less-Than-Immortal Versifiers but Damned Good Teachers to see her through yet another StratColl.edu semester or three before she joins her gin-and-tonic-slurping mate out in the pasture. Yes indeedy, Cap'n Gawd: Get us back Just Where & As We Were, Sir, s.V.p. — rolling our fortune-favored eyes at the word "Estates" and the 24/7 entrance gates and security patrols in our all-but-crime-free neck of the tidewater Maryland woods; tsking our liberal tongues at the U.S. fiasco in Iraq and at sundry other disasters around the world; shaking our snotty-intellectual heads at our community's toga parties and old-fashioned socials while at the same time quite enjoying them.
O bliss!
But no such luck, of course. Fabulator though G. I. Newett by vocation may willy-nilly be, the subject of these present fumbling fabulations is (anyhow was) a subdivision of the Real World — wherein, as Reader may have had occasion to note, nothing once truly whacked is ever quite restorable to What It Was Be fore. Best one can do is bid Mister Chairperson to tap the old microphone/gavel and proceed with our proceedings. Okay, Pete?
"Okay," declared Peter Simpson, and did just that: tapped the mike and thanked Amanda for her input, which he pronounced most certainly worth serious consideration even by those who — like himself and no doubt numerous others present ("Not including my wife," he acknowledged with a small smile: "She's with you, Amanda") — inclined to a more conservative conservationism, so to speak: the reconstruction of Heron Bay Estates as expeditiously as possible and as close as possible to what it was before, perhaps with "green" enhancements where convenient and cost-effective. Reduced community-assessment fees, say, for energy-efficient and/or eco-sensitive building and landscape designs?
"Right on," somebody agreed — Gerry Frank, I'd guess, or Dave Bergman — and there was a general rustle of approbation in the hall. No need for motions and seconds, Pete reminded us, since this wasn't a formal meeting, just a sort of solidarity and opinion-gathering session for us lucky-but-hard-hit survivors. "Your neighborhood reps and I will be getting together as often as we can to review and approve rebuilding proposals from individual homeowners, as well as from the condo and villa and coach-home associations and the Club and Marina Club boards, and we'll green-light as many as we possibly can in keeping with HBE's covenant, using what we've heard from you today as our guidelines." Deep exhale; stroke of beard. "So: The floor's open now to any others who want to be heard."