JOSEPH N. BELL -- The Bell Curve

When summer officially arrives in our Santa Ana Heights neighborhood

this year, it will bring mixed blessings. On the positive side, our

godfather, Jim Altobelli, and his Irish godmother, Pat, are polishing up

their big white table and the dozen or so lawn chairs that surround it.

This is a sign that very soon the late-afternoon cocktail lantern will be

lighted in their frontyard, and the chairs will be variously filled until

early October by those of us who are available and of a mind to

fraternize.

But the downside of the coming of summer this year is that the chairs

usually occupied by Ned and Sally Rose will be empty.

When my wife and I moved here 18 years ago, Ned and Sally were

long-established two doors down the street. They bought their Santa Ana

Heights home in 1975, and for almost three decades have watched a

generation of kids -- including their own -- grow up and go off while

their neighborhood struggled to find a new identity somewhere between the

old hands and the young families moving in and embracing a Newport Beach

address.

A neighborhood that had once been Midwestern stable turned mildly

schizophrenic. Million-dollar houses, expensive remodels and Back Bay

estates intermingled with the residue of the modest homes and sometimes

unkempt grounds that remind us of the way we were -- and sometimes still

are.

But change happens, even to old hands. The Roses’ youngest son is

about to graduate from UC Berkeley. Their work is neither as critical or

demanding as it once was. It was the right market in which to sell, and

the right time for an adventure. Everything came together, and so we will

be giving a farewell party for the Rose family on Memorial Day. And

they’ll be in a new home next week.

OK, so maybe they won’t miss the rock band practicing next door and

neighboring frontyards that resemble the Gobi desert or the jungles of

Brazil and the horse manure at the end of their driveway. But the other

side of this coin may well be a homeowners association that will tell

them they can’t leave their garage door open or mount a basket in their

driveway or have a pink front door.

If that happens, some nostalgia will be understandable. Living in our

neighborhood is rather like a narcotic that is extremely hard to kick.

It’s called freedom, and it carries a risk and a price that a lot of

people are not willing to pay. Those of us who have become accustomed to

it -- even warm ourselves in it -- sometimes get impatient at the price

and fight against it. But we wouldn’t trade such risks for our freedom

unless they became intolerable or there were important other

considerations suggesting a move. And because Ned and Sally Rose ran the

risks and paid the price for 26 years with the highest sense of unselfish

friendship and good neighborliness, they leave with both our blessing and

deep regret.

Admittedly, some of the regret is selfish. Just a few days ago, for

example, Ned hitched up his trailer and hauled some heavy plants from my

daughter’s condo to our backyard, where they will remind me daily of all

of the help he has offered cheerfully and with no sense of quid pro quo

over the years. A few weeks ago, he fixed our yearlong water heater leak

by simply tightening the overflow valve. Before that, he removed our

defective kitchen disposer and installed a new one. He and Ron Darling --

the lawyer across the street who would prefer to be a handyman -- put in

a ceiling fan in our bedroom and a garage door opener. And this only

scratches the surface of help offered without strings all those years.

Whenever Ned saw me wielding tools in my garage, he never failed to

poke his head in to see what was wrong and to make sure I wasn’t getting

into serious trouble. And Sally, who works at home, was forever running

one of us to the airport -- or picking us up.

This neighborhood has become a mosaic to those of us who have put down

roots here. When one tile is removed -- especially a critical tile such

as Ned and Sally Rose -- the mosaic changes. That requires an adjustment

those of us left behind don’t want to make, and so we resist change. But

at the same time, we hope that we will recognize the signs when the time

comes for change in our own lives.

A new young family will be moving into the Rose home next week. In the

short view, I’m hoping they won’t take the basket down over the garage so

I will still have a place to shoot hoops -- especially when we have

visitors who think I’m a soft touch and are willing to lose a few bucks

to find that I’m not.

In the long view, I’m hoping that the adults in the new family will

settle into Ned and Sally’s chairs around the Altobelli’s table -- or at

least try them out for comfort. We’ll see.

Meanwhile, we’ll have one hell of a party Monday, which the Roses

insist is just our regular Memorial Day bash and not a farewell party.

We’ll sit around the Roses’ pool and have drinks and stuff ourselves with

ribs and far too many accessories, and we may end up drowsing around a

fire pit. And in case we don’t get around to saying it, “Bon Voyage, Ned

and Sally. We’ll keep the light on for you.”

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.