Mutt & Jeff

From my childhood, the terms developer and garden apartment stick in my mind, right up there with cough syrup, dress shoe and report card.

My family lived in a modest Cape style house on a reasonably quiet avenue in Concord, New Hampshire. Better than half the surrounding landscape was in the rough natural state called woods. I could cross the street and be in the woods, once in a hundred feet any indication houses being nearby was lost, and taking off over the hill it was a half mile before the next neighborhood appeared. The woods were great.

My mother Elna was a small feisty person of 100% Swedish stock. She drove big cars she could only barely see over the dashboards of, and one of her nicknames was “Ol’ Lead Foot.” Her best friend Noel lived on the next street over and is of German heritage. She towered over my mom and had a sweeter disposition. But then, she wasn’t my mom. Among what the two of them had in common was grit, and a love of the woods. They called themselves Mutt & Jeff. Who was which I don’t remember, but I’m guessing my mom was Mutt.

Life was good. Until The Developers showed up with their shifty sights set on a tract of woods diagonally across the street from our house. Everything about them was big and bad. They were big guys who looked like gangsters. They drove big sedans that were black and had Massachusetts license plates. They had big ideas about squeezing as many garden apartments on that land as they could. And they had big money to do it with. How about a few single family houses? Nope. Booo and hisss!

Mutt & Jeff immediately went to the next city council meeting, where they minded their manners. From then on however they rolled up their sleeves and clenched their fists. They were not pleased with how their elected officials pandered to The Developers, obviously without regard for the woods and what they added to the quality of life in the neighborhood. The dining room in our house became mission control, the top of the table for a year did not see the light of day from under layers of plats, meeting minutes, newspaper clippings and letters. Seeing to it those woods stayed woods, damn it, became Mutt & Jeff’s full time job.

They went to every city council and planning board meeting. They taped the meetings to make sure the minutes were accurate. They analyzed every aspect of the proposed development, The Developer’s shady track record and the tract of land in question. They questioned the city’s ability to provide police protection. They questioned whether there would be sufficient water pressure (being on a hill) for fire protection. They wrote letters to anyone remotely interested in the situation. They called, they harangued. They were on top of it at all times. They had their act together and they were totally committed. It was very cool to see, and to be a small part of. To think back on it, I’m very proud of them.

There were times the prospect looked grim. Mutt & Jeff would come home from meetings, sit at the kitchen table for a cup of coffee and lick their wounds. They would look discouraged and exhausted as city officials made one more decision in favor of The Developers. They would sputter and scoff. They would throw ideas around… anything… what?… to stop the development.

And then a detail came to light. Few of us outside of the civil engineer’s office spend much time thinking about the sewer, that is until it doesn’t work. But what about the sewer? The entire neighborhood is up on a hill with steep grades in all directions. Mutt & Jeff got in touch with the city’s civil engineer who had otherwise been quietly staying out of trouble and talked about the impact on the system of this proposed big increase in sewage. Lo and behold it was determined the increased flow combined with steep grades would wear out the pipes at a rate unacceptable to building code.

And that was the end of the development.

It’s been years since I’ve been back to the neighborhood, but the last time I was there, so were the woods. As beautiful as they ever were.

Good work, Mutt & Jeff.

Gordon Bunker