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There’s always some old lady out there, thinking she and her friends are God’s designated judges of good taste. And the words out of her mouth are almost always “That’s just tacky.”

But what is tacky, really? And why does tackiness change with the region of the country?

Think about it, in Florida there are lawn flamingos. Pink birds, often with whirligig arms that do nothing but look . . . well, tacky. These often go hand in hand with the sofa on the front porch and maybe a car up on cinderblocks. Well you need something to look at from your Lanai. (That’s Floridian for what the rest of us call a screened-in porch.)

If you go to the Midwest, they have cows. Fake ones. Sometimes these are clearly something an enterprising soul cut from plywood and just painted up. Sometimes these are life-size, life-like reproductions, done well enough to make you turn your head as you drive by and ask yourself “Was there a cow just hanging out in that front yard?” It’s always disappointing when you realize you’ve been had.

The south is like that, too. Around here tacky is lawn ornaments of life size animals. If it just might run through your back yard you can buy a concrete or plastic version to put out in the front. Everything from small rabbits to full size deer.

One of our neighbors has three geese that move around week to week. The thing is, about five houses down, they have real geese that come in off the lake. Do the fake ones attract the real deal? Or maybe repel them? The real ones do poop a lot on the lawn . . . so I see that advantage to the plastic version.

Up north – in Pennsylvania Dutch country – they have “Bendovers”. These are painted cutouts, too (apparently painted plywood is nearly universal). “Bendovers” are cut and painted to look like a chubby woman has, you guessed it!, bent over. Usually she is showing off some floral granny-panties in the process. I’ve seen whole fences made of “Bendovers”. *Blech*

On the upside, I’ve never looked at a bendover and had that flash of thought “Was there really a fat woman flashing her knickers in the front yard?”

But when you think about tackiness, we have to realize that these are things you would normally see in this area. It’s Florida where we see the fake Flamingos. Wouldn’t these make more sense in Ohio where you wouldn’t see flamingos?

Why do we have fake geese and deer in Tennessee? Why not lawn armadillos? Wouldn’t that make more drivers whip their heads around and say “Did I just see an Armadillo in that yard?!?!”

But if tackiness is an imitation of what we usually see in the area, then are there tons of Grannies flashing their cotton floral clad butts up in Pennsylvania? *eww*

And can we then conclude something miraculous going on in southern California? Because their version of tacky involves a lot of concrete statuary of the Virgin Mary and her cohorts of saints? The other part of tacky that SoCal has a corner on is excess. It isn’t enough to just have a cement apostle with a medallion hanging from an outstretched hand. No, you need the whole last supper. With some flamingos thrown in for good measure.

Very few people in LA have enough of a lawn to showcase a statue or two. But what you find are 20foot by 20foot patches of grass that have statues and deer and a herd of cows all crowded among a small fistful of shrubs. I’m surprised more people haven’t taken to mounting these things on their roofs, just because that’s all the space they have left.

No matter what part of the country you are in you will find a place that has enough tacky to give your friends good directions to your own house. “You’ll pass the four lawn geese on the left, take the next right. If you pass a cow in the yard on your right, you are on the correct road. We’re the house with all the armadillos worshipping at the concrete Elvis.”

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These days most of us have cell phones, and most of us are familiar with the standard 4-1-1 code for information. But there are a few other 1-1 numbers that are useful as well. 6-1-1 is your cell phone company, which is handy . . . because 1-888-Verizon or 1-800-SprintPC is soooo hard to remember.

Then there’s 3-1-1, which a lot of people don’t know about. It’s for reporting non-emergent things to the people who can do something about it. Most major cities in the US have 311 service. However, they run on limited hours. So that mattress in the road that’s causing swervings and a bad backup had better fall off the truck between the hours of 9am and 5pm on a Mon thru Fri. It’s just a shame if something should go wrong (but not so wrong) during non-business hours.

On the upside, if you call 311 (which I have, good Samaritan that I am), they are generally nice to you. They are grateful to have citizens on the lookout for things that can be taken care of, glad to have that mattress reported rather than an accident because no one called in the mattress.

Then, lastly, there is the most famous 1-1 number of all: 911. This is for emergencies only. They are serious about that, and in many cities even have billboards reminding the townsfolk to only call for legitimate problems. The billboards may be money well spent, because most major cities are citing woeful underfunding of their emergency services.

And while there are lonely folks who call to chat, and the not-so-right-in-the-head who call to . . . well, does it matter? . . . there are the rest of us who need our emergency services.

Let’s clarify here for a moment. There are issues about dispatch no longer responding to home alarms. Most cities don’t send the boys in blue out because your cat tripped your motion sensor (unless you are a senator – in which case you voted to cut this service to everyone except you and your cronies. Yeah, check out your state laws. Then use a spatula to scrape your jaw off the ground.) There are also issues about being put on hold waiting for an operator to get around to your call in the order in which it came in. (I know there’s the old joke about “Suicide hotline – please hold” but it ain’t so funny when you actually hear “911 services – please hold”. At least they don’t patronize you with that “your call is very important to us, please stay on the line and an operator will assist you shortly.”)

While you can take issue with being put on hold, or getting inferior service, I’ve already cried my tears for that. I get that 911 is busy. They not only talk you through CPR and ask if the burglar is trying to actively break into your house right now, they also keep track of other non-emergency things: like issuing house numbers and such. (I bet you thought the Post Office was in charge of that, but, no – it’s 911. Which makes sense, because in the end it’s probably more important that you get your ambulance than your Sprint bill.) My issues with 911 are after they start speaking to you.

Have you ever known anyone who cussed out the 911 operator? Well, now you kind of do! My first sour taste of 911 came from the UCLA emergency services. Since these guys are campus rather than government based, you would think they’d be better. There was a bush on fire near one of the parking lots (yes, but the burning bush at UCLA is a joke for another day.) So I called the campus emergency services. After being routed to an answering machine twice (ouch!) I finally got a person. When I told the location of the fire, I was yelled at. Yup. “Don’t you think we already know about that? We’ve had it reported twelve times!”

Yeah, well, I’m me: I yelled back. “Fine! Next time I’ll let the campus burn!” I threw in another few choice words that I, uh, didn’t include here.

The second time I called 911 it was the LA area services. A nice woman answered the line “911, what’s your emergency?” I explained, while driving on the freeway I saw a bus engulfed in flame on one of the sides streets. Since the area was deserted (I could see clearly from the overpass) I didn’t think it was a photo shoot. She oozed niceness, “Oh, thank you. What’s the address?”

I explained again that I was on the overpass, but I did give her “the east-west street one block south of the Budweiser brewery.” She then pushed for an exact address. But I didn’t have one. Though she was polite, she kept pushing me for an address that I had been clear I didn’t know. I suggested the fire department should be bright enough to find a fire making a fifty-foot column of smoke in the sky. She suggested they weren’t. Ooooooh. *shudder*

In the end, she used her most chipper voice to claim there was nothing she could do without an exact address. I did not use my most chipper voice. Remember too, that the first thing I did on each of these calls was identify myself, but by the end I was almost glad they knew who was swearing at them.

I have to say this is one thing I’m enjoying about small town life. My local firefighters may be all volunteer. The station may often be deserted. But my neighbor says he called in a fire for a guy down the street who was out of town, and when asked which house was burning, he said, “Jake Myers’ house, the gray one on Brook Terrace.” The emergency team said, “We’re on our way! Thanks, Bob!”

*sigh* You gotta love that.

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