Bronze Zoo

[Martin Hash]

My wife, Gwynne, and I live in a pretentious neighborhood; believe it or not, I didn’t notice for years. The HOA requires landscaping front & back. We like to do everything ourselves, that’s especially my motivation, so it took several years of fiddling around before it was done. Initially I hired a landscape designer but after a couple thousand dollars for blueprints, I gave up and went my own way. One of the things I wanted was NOT to be like everyone else. I really didn’t care what the neighbors thought, and for the most part, they didn’t care either, though there were a few that gave me the evil eye.

My house is already ostentatious in an eccentric kind of way but what set them off, I think, was the small-gauge live-steam train track I put around the perimeter, complete with scaled-down famous local architectural features like the downtown train station, water tower, Columbia River RR bridge, Officer Row canon & apple tree. I still have a big summer party and run the train myself, though with lots of prep help from my friends. Another thing that caught in some people’s craws was the “Bronze Zoo” in the front yard, meter-high statues of animals: zebra, elephant, stallion, giraffe, and later a gorilla. They set on circular pads in the front yard surrounding a big iron gazebo shrouded in flowering vines. The statutes became semi-famous and people show up out-of-the-blue to take pictures of their kids in front of. Sure, no problem. The more secretive neighbors don’t like strange people but screw them.

It’s been almost 2 decades since the original inhabitants of our zoo and occasionally one of the zoo’s admirers will mention that they saw a statue somewhere. Recently, one of these made a special effort to get us the name & number of someone whose parents had passed away and they were trying dispose of animal statues in the estate. She even provided intriguing photos of animals we didn’t have so we made an appointment and took the truck out to see them. It was a very satisfying trip because we ended up with 6 new members for our menagerie: a rhino, baby gorilla, ostrich with 2 chicks & what we call “Spring Guy.” First, I sent a picture of them in place to everyone involved then Gwynne got my granddaughter for her first picture in the Bronze Zoo.

Bronze Zoo.jpg