The American flag is under attack again.

Sadly, I used to live a couple miles from where this story takes place. Prior to moving to South Carolina, I lived just off Main Road in Hampden, a suburb of Bangor, Maine.

The following article is lifted from The Bangor Daily News, written by Renee Ordway.

Hammocks? Yep.

Wreaths? Sure. Pick your size and shape.

Christmas trees? You bet.

Lawn chairs? That’s fine.

Welcome signs? Why not?

Flower pots? Of course.

Those are many of the things that one may find on any front porch.

Perhaps an American flag?

Not so fast.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” That was Darla Coombs’ response when she was told that the Highland Ridge Condominium Association wanted her American flag removed from its mount on the front of her condo.

“They told me if I felt I needed to fly the flag that I could do so as long as I put it in the back where it can’t be seen,” Coombs said during a recent telephone interview.

The Highland Ridge condos are located on Main Road South in Hampden.

The 16 or so units are all alike. Beige with white trim and white mailboxes lined up ever so neatly along the main access road.

And that, Coombs was told at a condo meeting, is how it shall stay.

With the obvious exceptions, of course.

A quick trip through the development this week showed that some of the condo owners like big wreaths. Some like small ones. Some like bows on their doors or garland on their banisters. Some like welcome signs on their porches and some don’t.

Individuality is allowed for flowers in the summer, Coombs said.

But there shall be no flags, and it says so right in the condo bylaws.

Coombs put the flag up, with the blessing of her immediate neighbor, when her son enlisted in the Army last spring.

The grumbling soon began, and by late summer a survey had been passed around. At a meeting last month, the American flag received the official Highland Ridge Condo Association heave-ho.

If you have a flag, then we all have to have a flag, the members argued.

“Fine. I’ll pay to have a flag mounted on each and every condo,” Coombs replied.

But I want an Irish flag, argued one member.

I’d like to fly a California state flag, argued another.

There can be no flags, they told her again.

“But it’s an American flag,” she pleaded.

Aware that she did sign the lease and in an attempt to reason with the board members, Coombs asked whether they would agree to have a flagpole put up somewhere in the development if she paid for the pole, the cement pad and a light.

That idea got nixed as well because the Highland Ridge Condo Association didn’t want to get stuck with the additional electricity fees that the light would generate.

“I’m not a rebellious person by nature,” Coombs explained to me apologetically, “but it’s an American flag.”

Coombs herself is a veteran. Her father is a veteran. Her sister and her brother-in-law are both veterans. Her uncle is a veteran, and her son is in the Army.

“I never play the veteran card,” she said. “It’s not something I talk about to a lot of people, but I got angry enough at that condo meeting that I did, and then I was angry at myself for doing that,”

Venise Bard is the property manager for Highland Ridge Condos. When I asked her about the reason for the concern with the American flag hanging on Coombs’ condo, she said only that the rule is clearly written in the condo bylaws in the lease that Coombs willingly signed.

She’s absolutely right about that.

Coombs held her ground for a while and left the flag up, but knew what she had to do in order to avoid any further controversy.

So on Friday, she dutifully went home on her lunch hour, removed the flag and tucked it away.

I’m sure the place looks a hell of a lot neater now and I’m sure that the members of the Highland Ridge Condo Association will sleep better tonight knowing it is gone.

That’s surely not a battle they want to have to fight again. They won and they can take their Saturday morning stroll through their impeccable development this morning and stand taller for it.

I strongly encourage all of my readers to contact the Highland Ridge Hampden Luxury Condominiums...and make your feelings well-known.

Contact Venise Bard

Office: (207) 942-6711
Mobile: (207) 745-3555

E-Mail: vbard@tcreal.com

Town and Country: 800-639-4905

Everything's Gone Green....

Moist…Warm…Sticky…Moldy.

Huh?

Had you there for a second, didn’t I?

To say that the weather conditions here in sub-rural South Carolina are often wettish is putting it mildly. The humidity is legendary, especially in the summer months. And what likes to manifest itself in warm, wet environments? Mildew and mold, of course.

And it simply flabbergasts me how many times a day I pass by homes growing green with a delicious humidity-induced salad up the exterior walls.

Now, I’m a homeowner, so I can say I more or less stand in similar shoes as the people I’m calling out here. I assure you, nothing is growing on the sides of my home. In fact, damn near nothing is growing at my house except crabgrass and a small patch of greenery over my septic field. But you lazy slack-asses who come home day after day to a moldy-assed domicile? You should be kicked in the nutsack.

I’m not talking about single-wide trailers here, either, although I pass several in my usual travels that look like camouflaged pillboxes in a triple-canopy Vietnamese jungle. No, I’m also talking about 2-and 3-level houses as well. There’s a home in my mom’s neighborhood in a really nice North Charleston subdivision that is probably about a $250,000.00 home, and it’s got salad everywhere. And it’s had that salad on the exterior walls for at least 2-3 years now. Of course, they also have a non-running Jaguar convertible covered in grime dry-rotting in place in the driveway, too.

I pass a house almost every day on the Edisto River, an absolutely gorgeous home that’s gotta be a $350K to $400K crib, and it’s green all up the front. Sure, it’s along a swampy-assed river, constantly exposed to spores of various fungi, but I feel that if you care enough to own an ostentatious abode in a conspicuous locale, then at least maintain it. The second house at least has the excuse of living far away enough from town on private acreage to not catch hassle from the neighbors over it, but I’m amazed that the first house mentioned has managed to get away with it for so long without catching shit for it from the Yard Nazis of the homeowner’s association.

Speaking of Yard Nazis, please don’t lump me in with that crowd. The typical Yard Nazi in my experience is some nosey old bag of a bitty who cruises the development at 5 mph in her 83 Buick reporting on the activities of her neighbors when the grass gets too long or they leave the garage door open all day. The Grass Gestapo wants “alles in ordnung” in the Stepford Cookie Cutter Communities. They dime you out to the HOA, who in turn dictates to you that you can’t park your boat in front of your house for more than 15 minutes, or you can’t have more than 2 carloads of visitors at a time parked on the street. The price you pay to live in a hastily-built identical cracker box 8 feet from your neighbors.

I’m just saying that you really should have enough pride in your environs to at least keep it from looking like a loaf of bread left in the sunshine for a week. Are you lazy, or just a pig? If you can’t afford to get it pressure-washed professionally, then at least get thee to Home Depot for some de-molding solution. Hose it down and use a street broom to scrub it off. A home with ivy-covered walls looks quaint. A home with mold-covered walls looks like a block of old cheese.

Of course, by now you must think I live in the Taj Mahal, right? Nope. I have a small, modest home, nothing ostentatious or grandiose. However, the grass is cut, there’s no mold on the walls, and no collections of deceased automobiles, piles of beer cans, piles of debris waiting to be burned, or half-destroyed trampolines. I do have a couple of ratty lawn chairs behind my trees that need to be offloaded in the spring but I assure you, no crops are growing on my home.

If you let the outside of your house look like something that was found in the back of the fridge wrapped in a foil cocoon and approaching sentient status, then I shudder to think of what the inside looks like. Enough dirt on the outside of your home to allow spores to attach and grow. Fungus, dude. You get fungus on your toes, you treat it, right? Same with ball fungus. You don’t just let those fungal infections fester, do you? You see mildew in the tub, you scrub it I hope. You don’t let your shower become a Third World rainforest do you?