Clean and Pristine
Carol Lepont lived happily on Sundance Street close to the western edge of town. The houses there were perfectly in tact and shone with white paint and copper roofs. The front lawns were pristine and short, the flowers neat and growing straight towards the sun. The people who lived there took special care towards their houses and were always proud of being recognized for their work in making the town look prettier to the people traveling from the west.
On the other side of the street lived the only person who did not partake in the pain staking work it took to beautify their property. No one knew the name of the woman who lived there, but she was not a favored person. Defacing her property was not only wrong, but it did not improve the image of her house (as countless endeavors to do so already illustrated) so there was no way that the residents could see to get her to clean up her property. There was nothing left to do but to leave her alone and ignore her presence.
For reasons unknown to the rest of the people, the house at the end of the street that was such a defacement of the rest of the houses went up for sale and, within the week, it was sold. The house was painted a vivid blue and the lawn was covered with prairie flowers instead of grass. The roof was charcoal gray instead of copper and, though the run down house was still unorthodox, but still neatly kept. Still, the people who lived there were too afraid to welcome this stranger who strayed from the white and copper for blue and gray. It wasn’t until Halloween night that they actually met the couple that lived there.
Sarah Lepont ran ahead of her mother, who was busy talking to the neighbor and rang the doorbell to the forbidden blue house. A tall woman and her equally tall husband came to the door when the doorbell rang and, surprised but pleased, handed her a neat package of candy. She politely thanked them and then returned to her mother, now gaping, at the edge of the sidewalk. Carol insisted on looking through the bag of candy before she let Sarah keep it, but there was nothing wrong with it; all the things had remained prepackaged and there was no rip in the plastic.
Slowly the town started accepting these strangers and the tension towards the house on the end of the block dissipated. There was no complaint filed from anyone staying, permanently or temporarily, or just passing through. The people of Sundance Street stopped noticing the difference in the blue house and some were even daring enough to paint their own houses a vivid color. But such behavior induced a blind-eye also and by a year since Halloween, none of the houses were white.
