Pride on Marshfield Avenue

..and no, I don't mean everybody's all jazzed about the new landscape in the traffic circle. Tonight Mrs. Ribs was hanging with her new neighbor and enjoying photos of him and his partner at the Gay Pride Parade.

Yes, that's right, everyone, Marshfield got its first gay couple. (And they bought their house for about eighty grand more than I paid for mine, I hear. Even in this housing market. So I really like them.)

I've been very hesitant to write about this just because I wanted to see how they would be received. They've actually been here a few months now, and you know what, it's all pretty much been fabulous. Not perfect--I've heard a few guys over by Mr. Worrisome's house muttering about "those gay-ass neighbors"--but not bad.

There's a little network of three or four of us homeowners who smiled real big when we saw the For Sale sign go down, and smiled even bigger when we saw the new owners. I ran into Bob the Builder in Dunkin Donuts one Sunday in June, a few weeks after they arrived. His reaction was one I had wondered about--he seems like a Mr. Macho kind of guy. But his business is real estate, so he's way more interested in what those fellows might mean for our property values than whether they sashay down the street, so to speak.

The other reason you've heard so little is I haven't figured out names for them. But one of them is going to be Green Thumb if he follows through on his offer to help me keep the plants in the traffic circle looking nice. Given the state of my yard and indoor plants, my own handle should switch from Maritza to Black Thumb.

I think now it's time for Barack Obama to come and do a campaign commercial on our block. We've got the Mexican evangelicals next door to the Irish Catholic across the street from the African-American union leader who likes to hang with the gayboys next door. Who own a pit bull. He's really a sweet dog, too.