Coincidences are happy flukes, I say, maybe rarely signs of a higher significance. My Beloved, true to our tomayto-tomahto nature, calls nearly all of them synchronicities. It was over the weekend when MB had a cartoon light bulb flash over her head: We need a cell-phone tower in the yard, collect rent and escape the recession!
A couple of days later, there’s news that the Springdale School District is entertaining the idea of renting a few square yards in each of six campuses to Verizon. Democracy says that this maneuver needs a zoning change so the Planning Commission then the City Council must pass on it.
Verizon has taken a long time to come to Northwest Arkansas. It’s been in the Little Rock area for around a year. I want to see it established because of the top ratings its wireless phone service has won consistently. What’s standing in its way is the erection of its 100-foot communication towers. Yes, all metal towers are utilitarian, but even the most sensitive, greenest Fayettevillians barely object, their cell phones bulging in the pockets of their practical cargo shorts.
Happily, and here’s the coincidence, the newspaper reports the settled lease: $1,000 a month per tower. That’s $12,000 a year, meaning the Springdale district pockets $72,000 to further the academic goal of No Phone Left Behind, or No Call Out of Range.
The Planning Commission tabled the motion, though. The Pollocks would like to step in: Our back yard is available. Or front yard. A thousand a month would be just fine, thank you. I’ll even mow and string-trim around it for no extra charge.
Don’t worry about our neighbors. Shady Hill is two houses down from a neighborhood association and silly covenants. Still, we must be good neighbors so we insist you offer the vicinity free wireless service: top-of-the-line free phones, unlimited hours, infinite roll-over minutes and all the rest. For the immediately adjacent property owners, we request that for the entire time you have a tower in the Shady Hill yard, all Verizon residential products be offered: land lines, high speed Internet access and digital television.
We all benefit.
So far as the camouflage package, you offer that to the schools, which want the Flagpole look. That would be OK with us, if the flag is waterproof and spot-lit so we can just leave it up 24/7/365. The tree kit is possible, but I’ve seen those around town, and they look so fake. What else you got?
Outside the disguise, could you bolt in a basketball goal and opposite that a tether-ball mount? We’ll use the bottom rungs of the ladder for a clothesline.
Here’s a camouflage idea for our street: The Seattle Space Needle. It’s 605 feet so a one-sixth scale would be about right. If Fayetteville had a Space Needle in this 1960s residential neighborhood, no one would object to any number of overpriced, never-to-be-fully-rented multistory condos around Dickson Street.
