ABSTRACT
HOBSON’S CHOICE (A VIGNETTE) Martha drank her second cup of coffee and looked west-beyond the clothes hanging on the line, beyond the cyclone fence, beyond her back neighbors’ camper-to her spectacular view of the pink morning light on the Flatirons, the signature backdrop to Boulder, Colorado. Just below the mountain, also within her view, million dollar homes in the Devil’s Thumb neighborhood overshadowed the half-million dollar homes further down the slope, the great dividing line of Broadway, and finally Martha’s neighborhood, perhaps the last bastion of the lower-middle class. Martha was satisfied with her thirty-year-old brick house, which in any case was about all her family could afford on her nurse’s salary and her husband’s computer contract work. She liked the idea of living in a real neighborhood where the families knew each other and watched out for the kids. Her children could easily make the walk from home to school, and she was close enough to stop by once in a while after work to check out what was happening there.
