Slow paced security effort fits rural lifestyle

Aug 1, 1997 12:00 PM, Larry Anderson

After 17 years at the same house, my family and I are moving this week. The fact is we outgrew our old house after only a year or so, but inertia and low mortgage payments conspired to keep us there more than a decade longer. It was years during which the children grew from childhood to within hoping distance of independent adulthood. The community also grew from rural to decidedly suburban, starting when the interstate highway came through several years ago. Growth isn't everybody's cup of tea, and too many traffic lights and Wal-Marts can make you long for simpler times. We found out that simpler times are about 20 miles further north.

Our new neighborhood offers several amenities - golf, tennis and "24-hour security." It's worth the extra drive through two small towns and endless cow pastures to our new community, often touted as "North Georgia's Best Kept Secret." Now that we're moving in, we promise not to tell.

The new surroundings are so peaceful it makes you want to drink iced tea and sit for hours on the front porch. If you squint your eyes and play along, it's almost like you're in the north Georgia mountains. The nearest store is four miles away and has a sign out front that offers "Copies. Fax. Bait."

We've never lived in a community with "24-hour security" before, and didn't know exactly what to expect. (My wife hopes "24-hour security" means my mother will have to stop dropping in unannounced.) What we found was about as far from high-tech as our house is from downtown Atlanta.

In fact, considering how long it takes to get there, the most obvious security measure at our new community is that most potential miscreants will lose interest before they find it. There is also the added deterrent of deer jumping in front of evil-doers' vehicles as they drive up to and through the community. The security hub at our new community is a little building at the front gate that houses a round-the-clock protection force. There are two entrance lanes at the front gate. Residents of the community (who have specially designated stickers on their windshields) drive in the right lane, barely pausing to acknowledge a bored, sleepy wave from the guard. The left lane moves more slowly. Typically, in fact, the left lane is stopped while somebody tries to convince the guard to let them pass.

We became familiar with how the guards treat left-lane visitors during the weeks before we moved, when the builder was still working every day on our house. We had signed a contract to buy the house, and were counting the days until the closing. We were impatient with the wait and a little obsessive about the work left to be done. We found ourselves journeying every day to the new house to check on progress and re-enforce our decision to move.

But how do you explain such silliness to a security guard? We learned in the process that the stringency of the 24-hour security force is largely dependent on which guard is on duty.

Like when the old guy with the starched uniform and slicked-back hair came to the car window, we knew we would have to tell him our life story. We tell him we're buying a house in this community and we want to look at it. Who's the builder? he asks. Who's the real estate agent? Where is the house? He would take copious notes on everything we told him, and then enter it carefully into his notebook log before hand-printing the date on a "one-day pass" and instructing us to keep it displayed at all times. Only then did he let us pass, half grudgingly. Call it security by interrogation.

Conversely, when the young woman guard with the overly blonde hair approached the window, she seemed to lose interest in our story before we even got it out. She would signal us to pass, without even the benefit of a "one-day pass" to keep displayed at all times. She finally grew so disinterested she issued a "one-day pass" dated a month later, telling us it could serve as a monthly pass.

After our move, we asked how we could get a sticker and join the residential traffic in the right lane. They sent us to the administration office (in the clubhouse), where a woman typed our names and other details into a computer. After all the information was in the computer, she pivoted around to her typewriter and copied the names off the computer screen onto a strip of "ID cards" she rolled into her typewriter. The next time I drove past the guard at the gate, I showed him my ID card, and he carefully wrote my name and license number in the aforementioned notebook. The guard reached his hand into my car to affix the sticker directly to the windshield.

Only days after moving in, I now drive by in the right lane, although I'm still perfecting my wave to the guards. I want to achieve just the right combination of nonchalance and a neighborly greeting, all while avoiding the deer.

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