Home and garden tours are great fundraisers, but boy howdy can they bring bubbling to the surface all manner of class and racial tension. I bet if I bothered to research it I’d turn up all manner of interesting articles on the subject.

Through the years I’ve watched many private kerfluffles and behind the scenes skirmishes over a few of the local tours, but I always manage to stay out of it. That’s sort of easy, actually, since we’re The Wrong Kind of People.

I’m sure the people running the home and garden tour are very nice and decent people, but in recent years I’ve encountered some real ugliness amongst those who want to or are on the tour. My favorite are the neighbors who want to keep Jews from applying to be on the tour because, and I quote, “You know how cheap they are, they never take good care of their homes.” It’s sad when adults say it, but I had a runin with some neighborhood kids who, when caught wrecking something in our yard, repeated the same basic line.

Ironically, despite our (or, rather, Husband’s) cheap jewish ways, we have one of the nicer gardens in the neighborhood. Or so I’m told.

I mention this not to vent about anti-semitism, but because it’s time for the home and garden tour.

I probably shouldn’t have been encouraging hundreds of drunk and adventurous artists to feel free to campout out on our lawn…

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postscript: I was at Costco today with the Bar Manager and saw a neighbor, who looked positively sick when she saw us buying 10 cases of beer and many cases of wine. I would have told her we weren’t really having a huge party but she ran off in a panic. Priceless. Almost made wading into the hell of costco on a weekend worthwhile.