4th of July Poisoning

Some quasi-aquaintances invited me and Marci over for some holiday festivities. It's hard to explain the type of community we found ourselves in (briefly). The setting was somewhat rural, and the place bills itself as a secure, gated facility with its own armed security force, a couple of restaurants, weekly entertainment, and "special events" such as "ethnic"-themed dinners and holiday parades. This month, for example, the on-compound restaurant's weekly dinner schedule included "Cajun" night, "Mexican" night, and "Bohemian" night (?). I've heard about this community before but never had occasion to visit, so I checked out their website, and their newsletter, which included interesting features such as a monthly article by the head of the security force, entitled "Inside the Gates."

If all of this sounds like something from a bad science fiction film, the reality only gets worse.

The community, being private, is also unmapable, so Googling directions to our destination wasn't possible. When we arrived at the gate, there was a small line of cars waiting to gain entry. When our turn came, a 70 year old woman in a lawn chair asked my name and where I was going, then just waved us through. If my name had a hyphenated "Al" or "Abu" in it somewhere, her reaction might have been different, but the place didn't strike me as much of a "hardened" facility. It's one of those places where every street has the same name, and essentially one street meanders its bizantine way through the whole development.

Apparently, the real advantage of living in a gated community is the ability to whiz around the neighborhood drunk on a golf cart, since this is what most of the denizens of "Grainville Acres" were up to on the 4th. As the golf buggys were the main modes of transport, people had to do something with their cars (people have to leave the "Acres" occasionally for groceries, I assume--you can't have such wacky ethnic food every day!). What they did with their cars was park them on their lawns, and I don't mean one car, I mean dozens of cars, hundreds of cars. Cars stacked two deep. Cars angled into ditches. Cars backed up to front porches with ice-loaded trunks open for handy grabbing of beer.

No car, however was in a garage, and it soon became apparent why: In Grainville Acres, Garages are living rooms. Televisions, couches, beds, refrigerators, dining tables, all arranged among the tool cabinets and industrial shelving, and all fully peopled at house after house. What everyone, it seems, has in common at the Acres beyond lawn parking, golf cart careening and garage dwelling, is smoking. From grandparents to toddlers, they were all puffing away. They smoked and played volleyball, they smoked and carried babies, they smoked and high-fived each other, they smoked for the sheer joy of secure community living.

We eventually found the house and it looked like a small family gathering, so we came back home.

Our neighbors saw us and invited us over for barbeque, which was delicious but was, unfortunately, raw meat with a veneer of blackening. Since we all like each other, I don't think they were deliberately trying to poison us, but you never know. Actually, we don't like to think of ourselves as high-maintenance, but with Marci's pregnancy we've (okay, I've) become picky and paranoid. Have some potatoes alioli? No, raw egg. Have some greek salad? No, unpasteurized feta. How about a burger? Great! I don't think we even noticed until we were half-way through them that blood was running down our chins.

Another thing to ask Dr. W. about . . .