Making Waves in Walden Pond

Imagine that you have spent too much time rubbing your nose in reality and want out. Imagine that you have gotten to a point in life where peace and quiet have become an obsession.

Imagine that you have lived most of your life in the noisy, crowded world where a broom is not something you clean with but something you use to communicate with your upstairs neighbor.

Imagine that through hard work and good luck you were able to find a quiet house on a quiet street--your own little piece of paradise.

Now, imagine that one morning you go to the store to buy groceries and return to find a huge tourist bus parked in front of your peaceful, quiet, out-of-the-way house. Think of a cruise ship docked in Walden Pond.

And then imagine that you see 30 tourists milling about in front of your house, in your driveway, fingering your hedge, picking--and, yes! actually eating--some of your neighbors’ wild blackberries.

Perhaps then you can imagine how I felt yesterday. And perhaps then you can understand why I temporarily went insane and started honking at these people and yelling at the bus to move so I could pull in the driveway and unload the groceries.

Did I mention that the smell of diesel fuel from the huge tour bus engulfed the street?

So, I started trying to figure out where I went wrong. When I moved to this house three years ago, I deliberately sought a place away from stores and schools and parks and any other facility where you might find the environment completely out of your control.

I came up to the block almost every hour of the day and night to confirm that there was no noise.

When I moved in, I could not believe it. Silence. Almost total silence, all day and all night. The ultimate luxury.

One night, at midnight, a guy with a guitar started singing a loud and off-key “Michael (Row the Boat Ashore).” I shouted, “Please be quiet,” more in prayer than in expectation. To my amazement, the concert ended immediately. Hallelujah.

Every Wednesday about 8 a.m., a guy with a leaf blower has been blasting the yard across the street. Then--incredible luck--my town outlawed leaf blowers.

So when I pulled up and saw tourists all over the place, I assumed the worst.

After my initial burst of rudeness at the sight of the giant tour bus blocking my driveway, I stopped honking, approached one of the tourists and asked, “What are you doing here?”

“We are on an art tour. We’re from the museum. Did you know that a very famous artist lives there?” she said, pointing to my neighbor Dave’s house.

Despite my obsessive search for peace and quiet, I had completely overlooked Dave and all that he represents. I had never for a moment stopped to consider the art menace just outside my door.

Now I’ll have to call a meeting. You simply never know when you move into a place when some busload of art lovers is going to come along and--boom!--there goes the neighborhood.