Something Priceless Goes On

This is a poor neighborhood but the people who live here are very aware, very observant, whenever you do something to make things better. If I go around picking up trash that's been thrown around, or if I mow the grass along the alley way, or if I fix someone's broken fence, everyone notices. It's almost spooky how attuned everyone in the neighborhood is to any improvement and to anyone who makes the improvement. These people hate living in squalor. Two neighborhood young punks tore apart a section of the wooden picket fence across the alley from me Sunday night. I got out there next morning with my tools and repaired the fence, and while I was doing it five or six neighbors gathered around. They are poor and ragged and besieged and devastated, but there is something priceless that goes on at such moments.