Showing Their True Colors

My hometown is Fort Worth TX. It was not exactly at the bleeding edge of avant-garde architecture or design, especially in the 1950s. Thus, when I was growing up, all I ever saw was the most plain, vanilla styles of homes imaginable. They were all earth tones or pale off-white colors, occasionally tinted with very light pastel blues, greens or yellows. It wasn't quite as gray as the Kansas depicted in Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz, but it was getting there.

I've lived in Ann Arbor MI since 1975. It is rather a different kind of place from my home town. For example, it is very much a college town, being the home of the University of Michigan. One grows used to seeing somewhat wild bits of external 'ornamentation' with student housing. Certainly, college students typically show a great deal less inhibition when it comes to the choice of the paint colors that they use.

However, I live over a mile from the nearest concentration of off-campus housing. Almost everything around my house for a number of blocks is ordinary, single-family dwellings. Still, these homes are not uniformly bland. In fact, they sometimes manifest a kind of ... daring? creativity? damaged sense of the aesthetic? Whatever it is, here in my supposedly more conventional part of town one can find some very interesting choices for exterior color.

I drove around for about twenty minutes a few days ago, taking photos of some of these unusual paint choices. I didn't go further than about ten blocks from my house. These photos do not do justice to the sharp oddity of the color choices I'm talking about. In bright sunlight they are especially striking. Unfortunately we here in Michigan have now entered into that season of the year that is more akin to the climate of Mordor, i.e., cold and perpetually gray and gloomy. My poor digital camera simply cannot bring out the richness of the colors. You'll just have to take my word for it.

Nevertheless, it is with great pleasure that I present to you ... [drumroll] ...

The True Colors Of Ann Arbor!

The lady who owned this house wanted to know why I was taking a picture of it. I told her that I loved the color. She looked doubtful but let me go without further comment.






This house is what one is compelled to call 'mustard plug yellow'. That is, it is exactly the color of the dried mustard one finds on a squeeze-type mustard bottle that has been sitting out all day at a hot-dog stand.





The purple color this photo really has a kind of electric (shocking?) quality in the bright sun.







This place is sort of a bright, little girl pink. (By that comparison, of course, I do not in any way want to disparage the color choices of little girls. It's just non-typical, if not downright odd.)






The oddness of this teal color, or whatever it is, doesn't come through here at all. However, it is enough to make you do a double-take when you drive by.






This is another head-turner, and it's on the same street, if memory serves. It's not quite a fire-engine red, but more of a Faygo Red Pop kind of red.






My son Dave worked last summer for one of those 'College Pro Painter' kinds of outfits. This is one of the houses they did. Dave and his fellow painters were much amused by the owner's choice of colors, which they characterized as Christmas red and green.





Near our house is a path leading through some woods to an adjoining neighborhood. When you come out of the woods, this is what you see. It is sometimes enough to make you wonder whether you should turn around and go back.





We pass this house very frequently, since it is on one of the two routes into our neighborhood. It's hard to say exactly what color it is. It's not quite salmon, nor is it quite peach. I asked my daughter what color she thought it was. She looked at it, and immediately said "Ugly."




This house is actually not easily visible much of the year because of foliage. However, once the trees and bushes drop their leaves, you can see it from Pontiac Trail, which is one of the thoroughfares leading through our part of town. I guess you'd call it a kind of light purple. Sort of. Maybe not.




My wife said this was 'green apple'. Maybe, but none of the green apples I've ever seen were fluorescent.







One has to wonder why people chose colors like these. Perhaps they feel that they are expressing their individuality or their non-conformity. Maybe they got a really good deal on the color at the paint store. Of course, they could simply be trying to make their house unmistakeable ("You, can't miss my house. It glows in the dark.") We will probably never know.

This is America. Apart from whatever limits local zoning ordinances may mandate, you are free to paint your house whatever color you want. However, the rest of us are free to marvel at your choice, and maybe snicker, at least to ourselves.

Relocating, The Hard Way

As sort of an interesting postscript to my earlier comments about wires and cables, today my family watched a well-organized team of workmen, engineers, drivers, technicians, police, etc., orchestrate moving a house through Ann Arbor. I've occasionally seen house-moving projects before, but this was by far the biggest and most impressive. The house in question is a two-story, 160-year-old brick structure. I hesitate to guess at its weight. The platform it rested on was massive. The two front-loaders that towed it were massive. Even the cop out front waving people away was massive. One of the onlookers I was with commented that she had read reports that the whole operation, from original acquisition to final setup, was going to cost around $1M. The owner must really have a thing for this house. Oh, and its original location is going to be replaced with some sort of multi-function residential/commercial thing.

Anyway, I thought of the wires and cables discussion as I watched the incredibly arduous work that the various crews had to perform to carefully take down power lines, telephone lines, cable lines, street lights, traffic lights, etc., so that the house could pass. You couldn't have avoided taking down the lights, but all the rest of it would have been so much easier if the various cables had been run underground, or better yet, not even there (i.e., replaced with wireless equivalents)!

I know, I know. It's too much to ask for. After all, do you really think you could run an arc welder on wireless power? Some things probably will always require wires. At least until, we get our own Mr. Fusion Home Energy Reactors that can run off of kitchen waste.