We are about to be cut off.

The reconstruction project on the south side of our property has finished the new curbing and laid pavement today. Next up is destruction of the intersection to connect all the new water, sewer and storm drain lines.

Problem is, the other construction crew working on doing the same thing in the intersection at the other end of our block is behind schedule. They just connected the water lines about an hour or two ago. (I learned when I let the heelers out for their after-dinner break only to find them attacking the worker standing in the middle of our yard with our hose in his hand. Yes, he tried to spray the charging heelers, but since the hose was only spitting air, we didn't need to have words. (Not that it would have mattered, since he unstood not a lick of English.))

According to the foreman of the south street project, with the snowfall season fast approaching, they cannot wait for the north crew to get done before they start on the south intersection.

So our entire block will be cut off from their homes and driveways. No great inconvenience for us, since we live on the corner, but I worry about the single Mom two houses up. That's a ways to carry groceries with a little one attached to your arm. Or the seniors next door, and the lion hunter with his hounds across the way.

Since most folks on our block also have company trucks in addition to their own vehicles, parking's gonna get crowded on our south side.

Aaaanyway, as a neighbor and I stood watching the paving this afternoon, I learned a few things.

First off, it was not neighbor kids that ripped off all but three apples from our curbing apple tree, as claimed by the project foreman.

Dozens of apples stolen when the vibrating street pounder shook them out of the tree. And eight smashed flat on the sidewalk by heavy boots because they could not be carried away.

Our neighbor watched. It was the work crew.

Great.

And second, I learned our neighbor was born in our garage.

Really.

In 1927.

'Course, it wasn't a garage back then. In this former company town, larger family houses were made by sticking two small houses together, end to end. Our garage was half of one of those houses, split back into two and moved to serve as garages when the refinery expanded in the 1940s.

Which finally explains why our tiny garage has sash windows, and the door looks like it was just cut into a wall.

Because it was.