I am the last remaining blight.

I wonder if my richest neighbor, only 200 feet down the road, is setting the future tone for the neighborhood. He lives in his $4.5 million mansion. Just for the summer. I guess he has other homes. Where winter isn’t so severe. He has oodles of money. There’s gossip that he sold his business a few years ago for $120 million. Anyway, he built the mansion 10 or 15 years ago. And he’s got it listed. For sale. With the prestigious international real estate company, Sotheby’s. So it’s not just anybody that’s gonna buy the place. They’ll need a tidy sum of cash. His son also built a mansion. More like $2 million, just a little over 100 feet from me. Never occupied the place. Decided to move to northern Minnesota instead. And it’s for sale, too. We’ve got a weak housing market. In Minnesota. Maybe even worse than in the rest of the country. But still, the asking price for the most stately mansion in the neighborhood is a cool $4.5 million. And then I begin to wonder why, when election time comes, all of the yard signs in the neighborhood tout Republicans. Such as our congresswoman Michele Bachmann. The ultra-conservative. From the lunatic fringe. Yes, the same zany woman that’s thinking about launching a campaign for the Republican nomination for president of the USA. As far as I know, I’m the only Obama supporter in the neighborhood. Could be that I’m the token relatively impoverished being. To show that the neighbors tolerate the underclass. Anyway, I get the feeling that all these rich Republicans are doing me a favor. They are making my property more valuable. Merely by their proximity. My best prospect for a buyer is a mansion builder. Ready to put a torch or a bulldozer to my place. To finally rid the neighborhood of the last remaining blight. A liberal living in a shack. –Jim Broede