The Willow Glen Resident

Point of View

Deborah Taylor-Hollis

To dust is a must in San Jose

To hear a historian tell it, Oklahomans left their state during the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s because the crops couldn't survive as the land was ravaged by dust storms. I have my own theory about the Midwesterners' mass exodus to California: Thousands of women, tired of dusting, hog-tied their husbands, grabbed their clothes and the last can of Bon Ami and fled the state rather than kill one more chicken to make a duster whose feathers would become blackened in a matter of seconds.

Judging by how often I dust, when they got here they must have been disappointed. San Jose seems to be the dust magnet of Northern California. Every time I see those commercials on television for topsoil conservation in the Midwest, I fight the urge to call the Ohio state capital and demand they send a truck right away--I have their missing 28 tons spread over my furniture.

In winter, I can get away with dusting only once every three days because I have the house closed up so tight, I don't even open the mailbox if there is a breeze. Mina Harker's home in Bram Stoker's Dracula has nothing on mine--even when Professor Van Helsing bolts the parapets, puts crosses in the doors and places garlic in the windows to keep Dracula out. I can guarantee, no vampire could penetrate my place.

But I still get dust.

I have so much dust inside, I could water the coffee table and get weeds--and I waxed it this morning. I cannot keep up, which leads to depressing acts of housewife desperation. I fantasize about Arctic living, where there is no dirt-covered ground for miles, just snow. I wonder how I could live with only tile walls and floors, hosing them nightly. I secretly envy the boy in the plastic bubble (but I'll bet his mom still had to dust the outside every day).

The last time I felt so besieged was during our bathroom remodel, when my dear carpenter tried to "sand the walls" ( a term that should strike terror into one's very soul). I found it was more of a grind-up-gypsum-until-lung-cancer-develops situation, and used two bottles of Pledge a day to keep the mounds at bay in the house. We ate out--the moment you put down a fork or a knife it was covered in the stuff. I used a straw in a covered cup of coffee in the morning.

After living through that nightmare, I swore I'd keep dust out of my life forever, and I have spent quite a few years perfecting ways to keep this promise.

One thing I have learned is to forget that the street sweeper exists. This bit of wasted motion and city budget busting doesn't clean anything; it just adds water to whatever is close to the curb and swirls it around--the same thing I used to do with the hose when I was a kid during summer vacation. I never got paid for it then, but apparently perseverance pays off, because these guys make well over 25K a year for the mechanical mud pies they make. I clean the streets myself, regularly.

With three different long hoses and a nozzle that shoots streams of water as accurately as any Dirty Harry gun, I can wash down our driveway, the gutters, and the street in front of our house daily. I can watch that black line of dirt being pushed down to the sewers, and I know that I'm not only keeping the streets clean enough to run barefoot on (a favorite pastime), but with every squirt of the hose, another pound of dirt is forever prevented from entering my house. It takes time (especially when I wash down the entire court), but I know my lungs are cleaner for it. I have also found summer is much more fun when I am the one with the hose in my hand.

Keeping the dirt out of the house will never be easy, and I won't get any help. Dusty walls, dirty cars, filthy windows and the inability to use outdoor clotheslines are not quality-of-life issues to our City Council (the firsthand proof is airport expansion). However, I will continue to fight the good fight here in the Glen. I have verbally banned all leaf blowers in the neighborhood (with almost total success). I only hope that we can continue to keep our cars clean and our sneezing to a minimum without more drastic measures.

I have several possible ideas in research and development, and you all know how dangerous I can be when defending the castle. I would compare myself to a knight in shining armor--but we all know that you can't keep it shining on horseback, or anywhere else in San Jose.

Wanted: Your ghost stories. Please tell me about Willow Glen's supernatural haunts for an upcoming issue.

[ Back to Contents Page | Willow Glen Resident Home Page | Archives ]