About a month ago, the local power company dug up the pipes in front of my duplex house – and not just my house, but all the houses on my crooked block. The jackhammering went on for three weeks. As I have been working from home, this was driving me stark ravers. I fixated on a point: the workers, mostly interchangeable white men of indeterminate shaving habits, appeared to work six days a week without a bathroom in a New Jersey July. My co-workers and I referred to these workers as The Anthonys because, as I mentioned, the racket made coherent thought nearly impossible and, as you know, I am not a nice person.

The Anthonys – and at some points there were at least a dozen of them – dug up plants along the edge of my neighbor Andie’s front yard, which might be 14′ x 10′. It’s not large at all. I fretted about the plants, hated the drilling noises and was mystified when a holly tree, trimmed to about 3′ in height, disappeared. Several forsythia disappeared. I located the holly on the side of the house. Then, an Anthony grabbed the holly and started walking away with it. It was then I uttered the immortal words, “WHERE ARE YOU GOING? THAT’S MY BUSH!” 

I stood up straight, remembered I am a hard woman and said, “That’s my tree. Destroying them is illegal in New Jersey. Replant that.” Next thing I knew, an Anthony with a shovel was digging a hole. I said, “I’m sorry you got the terrible job.”

“To be honest,” he said, “this is all I do around here.” I had to fold myself in half to laugh hard enough. Andie chose this moment to burst from the house with a vengeful look on her face.

“Too much fun is being had out here,” she said. I looked back at the guy digging a hole for a small holly tree in 90 degree heat.

“No,” I said, “No one is having any fun here.”

The road crew moved to another block up the street, then around the corner, then further down. Or maybe it moved to another town, I can’t really tell. The crews are everywhere on this side of our small down, and all the roads bear the scars of digging and temporary patching sometimes two and three times. Tomorrow morning, I am going to drive the .3 miles to the farmers market, where Andie and I will buy five cases of tomatoes from the organic farmers and drive them home. If I were a nicer person, I might be concerned about the scorn of my neighbors, but my neighbors made the power company make an appointment to dig up their yard, thus subjecting the rest of us to three consecutive Fridays in which our garbage was not picked up. In 90 degree New Jersey. In July. So fuck them. I will also buy peaches.