Sometimes A Dream Can Be A Scream

A former classmate and e-mail friend of mine and I have had several conversations regarding dreams. He is inclined to be a dream interpreter while I tend to believe dreams are the sub-conscious "cleaning house", i.e. working out stresses and kinks that we all accumulate each day.

Anyway, what brought this narrative on was a dream I had last night. I have mentioned in earlier blogs that I am a councilman in a small city in the Midwest. In this dream, I had agreed to take on some project that I don't remember now, but didn't seem to be a biggy. I started to leave the house to go to the garage to get my car. We have a separate garage that sets back from the house about forty feet.

As I stepped out of the side door to the driveway, I saw a temporary two stall garage had been erected in my back yard and the were two cars in it, facing toward the driveway. As I stepped out of the house, one of the them was running and the driver rev'd the engine as though he was ready to run me down. I stayed on the side stoop and asked them what they were up to. There appeared to be four young people in the yard. I told them I was going to call the police.

I went back into the house and opened the phone book trying to find a specific name. The name of a former Police Chief in our city. My wife and one of our sons were in the kitchen area with me - our boys have grown and left the house more than a decade ago.

I was unable to find the name I was looking for (yes I know, one cannot read when one is dreaming. I read that somewhere and have been trying to read in my dreams since. I now can occasionally recognize a word or believe I have read the word). I realized, or my wife said, that the name I was looking for was no longer the police chief. It was a classical "duh" moment even though it was in a dream. I started across the room to get the phone, knowing the phone number for City Hall that I needed to dial.

Our son reported that those in the back yard were disassembling the temporary garage but they were also in our garage taking my tools and anything loose. Either I suggested or my wife thought that I had told our son to go out and watch them as she objected strenuously to him going out. I concurred and our son stayed in the kitchen.

I got to the phone only to find that "they" had captured my line somehow and were saying repeatedly that I would not be able to use the phone. This was intermittent with music playing and the message that they would not release the phone for my use.

From here, the dream becomes jumbled, probably because I was starting to awaken. I do remember more people in the drive way and feeling threatened, but then I was awake.

Okay, dream imagers, do your thing. As far as I am concerned it was just a collage of images that interwove the concern I have about our budgeting process in the city and the rich dinner my wife and I had shared the evening before. The feeling threatened probably stems from my frustration with the way a city has to account for their expenditures, applying each minute an employee works to various tracking accounts set up for streets, parks, library, city hall, etc. When each employee's wages are divided amongst seven or eight accounts, it is a nightmare trying to ensure balance amongst the departments and manage the inflation that all dedicated employees drive into an accounting system.

Such inflation of costs are often attributed to greed or empire building, but in our case, I can say with confidence that each of the departments are striving to provide optimum service to the citizens. But, how much can a city of approximately seven thousand afford? We border on the second largest city in the state, so we don't have a retail business district with the related tax income. Further, we have a tradition of keeping our taxes below that of our two bigger neighbors which we are able to do because of the high level of volunteer work we benefit from.

Our Police Department is now full time and all professionally trained officers, but our Fire Department is still ninety percent volunteer. In both cases, we try to keep the officers and firemen equipped with contemporary and quality tools with which to do their job while at the same time ensuring the streets, sewer and water system are maintained plus providing a functional library and parks system.

Each of those service functions have hopes and dreams of providing additional capability or services to the citizenry. Whereas we strive to keep our expense growth commensurate with inflation percent, equitable raises and "improvement" projects strongly drive the budget askings from each department. A new fire truck here, data modems and intersection cameras there, new playground equipment and, oh by the way, circulation is up so high in the library that they need new space, etc., etc.

Well, we do segue easily from dreams to reality don't we? One never knows where they will end up when they dialogue with me. And since we are in the midst of the budgeting process, I can't tell you how that will turn out and since I am awake, there will not be additional scenes from the dream, so I guess I'd just as well sign off.

See ya.