I want my $600.31 back.

We have a lot of storms here in the Midwest. I once swore I would never live north of the Mason-Dixon line ever again, but I did miss big thunderstorms and tornado season living down there. There's nothing more exciting than a purple-green sky sporting a rotating wall cloud. When I was young and foolish, I would go for walks during those nasty storms and relish how all the little hairs stood up on the back of my neck. (Now I just watch from the porch.)

We have noticed a new phenomenon associated with the beautiful Midwestern storm: the insurance company scam. After even the puniest of hail storms, out-of-state contractors drive through Ellesiouville neighborhoods in shiny new Jeep Cherokees to tell homeowners that the storm has damaged their roof or their siding. Sign on the dotted line, they say, and insurance will pay for it all! Of course the work is not done by the wealthy Anglo contractors who signed everyone up, but by poor migrant Latino workers with questionable visas.

The first time these companies came through, the people who opted for the "free" work got their policies canceled -- we have friends who had to scramble for a new insurance company shortly after they bragged about their new siding. Now it seems the insurance companies just let it happen. At least half of the homes in our neighborhood have new vinyl siding (beige seems to be a popular color) and/or new roofs courtesy of the same "disaster restoration" contractor; no one has reported being cancelled or having their premiums increased.

There is so much of this work going on that our streets are littered with vinyl scrap, roofing nails and sheet metal screws. My tires have been punctured three times in the last year and a half. The most recent puncture (a sheet metal screw) occurred last night. Unfortunately I didn't notice that my tire was completely flat, and I sleepily drove three blocks on it this morning before I figured out why my car was tilted, pulling to the left, and making a strange flapping sound.

Although it was only a few blocks, driving on the completely flat tire destroyed the sidewall. At the Tire Barn this afternoon, the mechanic tells me that I cannot replace just the one tire. No, I can't just replace two. Because I had the misfortune to purchase an all-wheel-drive Subaru Forester, I must replace all fucking four, or risk several thousand dollars' worth of damage to the transmission. A quick call to the Subaru dealer confirmed that this was true.

So now my neighbors' propensity to think like trailer trash looking for their next government subsidy has done more than make me wonder about their intelligence and ethics. It has cost me plane tickets to Paris. Fucking idiot bastard pinheads.