The Garden City Refugee

A Tale of Two Trees

August 17, 2026

Imagine, if you will, a guy who lives with his wife and two kids on a suburban street. For the sake of discussion, let’s call him Victor. Victor works for a government agency. Or more accurately, is employed by that agency. See, he doesn’t actually do much actual work. In fact, he’s home more often than some of the retired folks on his block. But rest assured, Victor has likely never missed a paycheck. Especially during the war, when all the government’s draconian measures aimed at the population they were trying to maim and kill practically brought the flow of business through Victor’s employer to a screeching halt.

Victor has a double-car garage, which he uses as a den. No car has likely been inside it since he bought the house. Inside is a big-screen TV, a beer fridge and a play area for the kids. This auxiliary den is wide open on most days. It’s missing a bathroom, but rather than go inside to relieve himself, Victor occasionally steps around the side of the house to take a whizz. And rather than use the inside of their spacious house or the backyard, his wife often takes a mat out on the driveway to do squats or yoga. She likes the attention. On occasion, they have a waterslide and a bouncy castle set up in their front yard. And while their kids are playing on the bouncy castle, they blast loud music that can be heard from half a block away.

Victor’s kids have free rein, not just of their own front yard, but of most other front yards in the neighborhood, where they run around and play. They dig around the dirt of one neighbor’s yard and pick up and throw stones professionally arranged and set around a tree on another neighbor’s property. They are just as often running out into and playing on the street, seemingly with no concept of fear. All while Victor or his wife, perched on a lawn chair at the end of their driveway, cracks open a beer and watches. To them, the entire neighborhood, including the street, is a public playground for their kids. Kids who scream at the top of their lungs at all hours of the day and sometimes at night. Not just regular kid noises, but blood-curdling screams. His wife seemed royally pissed after a neighbor recently opened up the window and yelled, “Enough!” as this was going on well after dark.

Across the street from Victor, the neighbor there is getting landscaping work done. For the sake of discussion, let’s call him Hank. One day, while the landscapers were digging around Hank’s front yard, Victor walked across the street to talk to them. Curious, Hank thought. What does this work have to do with Victor? It’s not on his property.

Hank soon found out. Later that same day, when going outside, one of the landscapers approached him. Apparently, Victor had asked the landscapers if Hank would be open to cutting down two trees near the curb approaching a bend in the street. Because of the trees, Victor said, when people come barreling around the corner, they can’t see the kids.

So in other words, Victor wants Hank to cut down the trees in order to make it less dangerous for Victor’s kids to play in the street.

Hank’s first thought was to plant a couple more trees just to piss Victor off. But as much as he’d love to do just that, he doesn’t care enough to part ways with the cash needed to do it. Hank was also curious as to why Victor, a man clearly not lacking in nerve, opted to pursue back-channel communication with Hank through a landscaper rather than going to Hank’s door and talking to him face to face. Perhaps even Victor realizes how galling it was to make such a request, Hank thought.

In addition, Hank wonders why, if Victor is so concerned about his kids, why he doesn’t teach them not to play in the street. The street, after all, is for cars. It’s not a playground. And why Victor hasn’t spoken to the neighbor down the street, easily the biggest source of the speeding cars on the block. Said neighbor is, in fact, running a commercial business out of his home despite the residential zoning designation and both he and his employees are constantly racing up and down the street. Failing a satisfactory outcome, Victor could take his case up with the municipality and force his neighbor’s hand on account of the long-standing zoning violation.

But instead, in Victor’s eyes, Hank’s trees are the problem.

And they’re not going anywhere.

Any similarity to actual events is strictly unavoidable.