Portrait of an Artist in a Small Town

Today, when Tanya and I took one of our thrice daily walks around the block, I again noticed the peach house on the corner of Alta Vista and Lemon. I might've pointed it out to Tanya, but she was busy sniffing an old gummy-Backstreet-Boys wrapper on the ground. The house perfectly sums up the block on which I live.

I've never actually seen the woman who lives in the house. I assume it's a woman, though it's not totally unlikely that a man would secretly decorate his large front porch for every holiday - even Flag Day - and bouce atmospheric lighting off a bunch of Japanese-style paper lanterns hanging in the adjacent tree. Color coded per holiday. The weird thing is the secrecy of it all. I have a feeling that this holiday fiend goes on all-night decorating benders. For instance, I went to bed on Valentine's Day and everything at the house was red, pink, and white. By the next morning, however, the porch and lanterns were already Irishy green. It's not your typical Creative-Memories-Scrapbooking-Slut sort of decorations. There are the usual, innocent sorts of decorations, such as shiny green shamrocks hung like paper chains across the length of the porch. But then, there are the mannequins. One of the several for St. Patrick's Day is a scary leprechaun, leering over the front railing of the porch with a huge stein in his hand. It's not at all friendly. It's like the Lucky Charms leprechaun grew up and became a violent drunk who eats passers-by, not cereal.

Believe it or not, the holiday house is not the only house on the block with a mannequin on the front porch. Ever since I've lived here, the semi-creepy old man who lives around the block poses a female mannequin in various positions on his front porch couch. She is scantily clad and scarily life-like. Sometimes, when I'm walking by, lost in my own thoughts, I'll suddenly jump because he's just changed her arms from crossed against her chest to pointing out toward the street, like she's ready to charge.