Ingrid McCleary
By INGRID MCCLEARY
Soon after purchasing my parents' home and settling into 20706 Dawn Drive, I ordered 1,000 new cards for my husband's horseshoeing business. Six months later, the city declared that Dawn Drive, Sunnymount Avenue and Crawford Drive could officially shake off the "county" coat and be incorporated into the city. As a show of good will, they assigned us new house numbers (so we'd "sound" like our city neighbors). Nine hundred and three business cards down the drain.
Still, we were happy with the news. I'd lived in this house from age 11 to 19, and when I was 16, some juvenile delinquents crept through the night and systematically smashed car windows on our street. They never stole anything, but every weekend for three weeks, my father discovered thousands of crystal nuggets in and around our cars.
We couldn't call the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety for help. We had to rely on Santa Clara County sheriff's deputies for security drivebys (remember when drivebys were a good thing?). And since the sheriff's territory was vast, we didn't get enough attention to make us feel safe.
Of course, when my father and my younger brother decided to hide in the car the following weekend, it didn't make my mom and I feel any safer (we'd take broken windows over physical injury any day).
But my father was determined to catch the punks red-handed, and all our rational alternatives fell on deaf ears. Luckily, it was chilly that night, and after two hours of shivering on the car floor, they gave up.
So I was relieved to hear that the Sunnyvale Public Safety Department would be close by now, thereby stifling the same self-defense hormone surge that would surely course through my husband if a new generation of JDs decided to leave their mark on our streets. One thousand revised business cards seemed a small price to pay for security.
Because we were now part of the city, we had to dress like part of the city, and our streets would soon be attired in streetlights and sidewalks. Hallelujah!
Of course, with the street lights glowing proudly through the night, we lost our reputation as the spookiest place on Halloween. And it completely destroyed the ambiance required for the teenage make-out sessions that had occurred regularly on our darkened lanes.
I figured it would only be a matter of time before the sidewalks rolled in. Well, time has a way of rolling right by you.
It was not until I watched my son rattle down our street on his new rollerblades that I realized 13 years had passed since our address change. I'd skated over these same bumpy streets years ago and recalled how my legs grew numb before I reached the smooth pavement on Spinosa Drive.
I remembered then the other advantages of sidewalks. The lines etched into the concrete gave my ride a soothing rhythm--da-DUNK, da-DUNK, da-DUNK. They provided entertainment, like counting the squares between school and my home, and games, like step on a crack, break my mother's back.
Why had we never gotten sidewalks? I wanted my son to feel the rhythm on his own street! I decided to go in search of our sidewalks.
On the Internet, I found the online version of SunDIAL, the Sunnyvale Direct Information Access Line (774-0262) and located a listing detailing who to contact if I noticed "broken, settled or missing sidewalks."
I wrote them and told them, "My sidewalks are missing!" I know that's not what they meant by missing sidewalks, but hey, I figured it would get their attention!
It did. I received two email messages and two phone calls the next day. I feel confident the sidewalk question will be addressed soon. Maybe we'll even have sidewalks in a few years.
But I have a sneaking suspicion it's going to cost me a lot more than reprinting 1,000 business cards.
This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, November 13, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.