Neighbors

Neighbors

With few exceptions, I have never had good neighbors. Some of the places I lived in college, both the dorms, and a couple of flats, I had good neighbors. When I was a sophomore, we had an upstairs neighbor with a capuchin monkey that would clean your marijuana by happily eating all of the seeds. Now that’s a good neighbor. And she was cute too-the neighbor, not the monkey.

Neighbors are one of those classes of people who you don’t chose, but who can put a serious damper on your joy of living. Co-workers are another class you don’t chose, and who can make life hell. All it takes to become a neighbor is enough money to buy or rent the residence nearby. Co-workers are hired because they have a skill that your employer needs, and they are qualified to perform. In both cases, if the person is a class 1 peehole, you have to put up with them for significant portions of your life.

On the D.S.N.A. (DeBaum Scale of Neighborly Annoyance), my current neighbors only rate a 3 or 4. They don’t make noise or toss bags of refuse at their garbage containers from beyond three point range. Their transgressions consist of a long term inability to park their cars correctly or considerately. This has been exacerbated by our endless winter of snow. We all have walkways from our front doors to the street, which much be shoveled out in order to gain access to our autos. These geniuses will park their cars across the walkways, thereby necessitating a long walk to the next open walkway, or a shuffle in between mounds of dirty snow and filthy, salt-encrusted cars. Now, I am not Stephen Hawking, but you don’t have to be a theoretical physicist to figure out where to park to avoid this unpleasantness. They apparently don’t have this sorted out yet.

My very first neighbors in Pittsburgh were perfect representatives of N.F.H. (Neighbors From Hell.) This family consisted of a single mom (a huge uh-uh in 1950s Pittsburgh society) and her four kids. The kids were generally dirt-smeared, smelly, snot-nosed, not real bright or friendly, and thievish in nature. Their house had no curtains, giving everyone an eyeful of their filthy, chaotic living arrangements. They chucked their garbage off of their second floor back porch in the general direction of their garbage cans. Their success rate for making this shot was about 30%. The stupid kids eventually set the house on fire while playing with matches and they were forced to move. This proved to my parents that, yes, God does answer prayers. However once they left, there was a massive cockroach diaspora into the rest of the neighborhood. The burned house was torn down. My father bought the lot and planted a lawn to insure no one else would move in.

When I lived in Berkeley, my neighbor and I took turns tormenting each other. I tormented her with loud music. At the time I was very much into Led Zeppelin. She was a sculptor and would bang away on whatever substance she was sculpting until the wee hours of the morning. She had a cat named "Feets" that had six toes on each foot. Whenever I saw this neighbor, I was always stunned by the sheer look of hatred and disgust that she directed at me. When she moved out she stole my stereo. But she was not the only one I tormented. When I lived in this small studio apartment, I had three cars: a SAAB 99, a massive Chevrolet Kingswood Estate station wagon (A.K.A.:”The Klingon Battle Cruiser”) and an Aston Martin DB4. So in addition to the constant pressure I exerted on the supply of parking spaces in the area, I worked on my cars in the parking lot. I really, really disassembled the SAAB on one occasion while attempting to replace the clutch. I mean, hood removed, grille and bumper removed, car up on jacks, a scenario lifted intact from the yard outside the trailer of a Kentucky meth addict, and transplanted intact to the Athens of the West. While levering the clutch out of the car using a six foot steel bar instead of the required tools, I launched the entire clutch assembly about thirty feet into the air, and watched all of the heavy pieces come down in the next yard, all over the neighbors’ vegetable garden. The damage wasn’t too bad, just some crushed lettuce, mangled tomato plants, etc. I got all of the parts out of the yard before the neighbor came home. I don’t think he suspected a thing.

But the absolute worst neighbor I ever had was in Mill Valley.

Gail and I had just purchased our first house. It was winter and we loved to curl up by the fireplace and watch TV. But during one cozyfest, we thought we smelled something odd, a chemical smell. It went away and we forgot about it. Then, while cleaning up after dinner one night, we smelled another acrid odor and noticed thick white smoke pouring from the neighbor’s chimney. Something had to be wrong. We ran around the corner, banged on the door and met “Roland.” 

“Roland” bore a passing resemblance to Jabba the Hut. Grinning, unshaven, overweight, hairy, and obviously stoned, he explained that he burned his garbage rather than have the village haul it away. That evening he was incinerating a full vacuum cleaner bag, and some old stereo speaker cabinets. 

Here are some fun “Roland” facts:

-He grew pot on his patio behind a curtain of bamboo plants and burned the stalks and stems in his wood-burning stove. 

-He was fond of Chevrolets and had about five of them. One of them, a 1953 four door that was a faded green, had a bumper sticker that read “Life ain’t easy when you’re fat and greasy.”

-He had a massive boat that never moved from the front of his house. Someone spray-painted “S.S. Eyesore” on it one night. Then it was set on fire which invoked a massive response from the fire department. After the burnt hulk was removed, he got another massive boat. It also never moved from the front of his house. You can go on Google right now and see it from space.

-He was once kidnapped, rolled up in an oriental carpet and severely beaten with baseball bats. Speculation ran to a soured drug deal

-He made a large cash withdrawal from a local bank, thought he was being followed, went home, and shot the next person who came to his door. No charges were filed.

-He built an illegal addition to his home across a drainage ditch that ran through all of our yards, thereby causing flood problems for us and another neighbor. 

-He had a mean old basset hound that ran loose, chased all the neighborhood kids and evacuated his bowels everywhere. We forgave the basset hound when he killed another neighbor’s rooster (who used to crow every night starting at 2 AM.)

-He was once ticketed in Nevada for driving his Corvette 140 in a 55 zone. He thought this was funny as hell and swore he would never pay the ticket.

-He had stalker moves. If he wanted to talk, he would never call. He would just show up at the front door and announce that he had seen us come home. 

And this is just the stuff that happened while we lived there.

But I have to be honest, I was not the best neighbor in Mill Valley either. Again, it was my automobile collection. At one point I had three Triumphs: a Spitfire that was modified to road race in the SCCA, A GT6, and a TR6. This was in addition to a trailer to haul the Spitfire, a tow car, and a “normal” car for Gail to drive to work.

We had some poor, naive Yuppie neighbors who moved to Mill Valley seeking peace and serenity, but they had “Roland” on one side, and me on the other.

They had to look out of their kitchen window and see race motors dangling in the air lofted on my engine hoist, endure constant grinding of starter motors, cussing, clanging, hammering, and finally when I was successful, the unmuffled roar of a 1198 CC Triumph Spitfire race motor! Huzzah! What a way to spend your weekend, eh Biff? In addition to all that, they had to endure the other fine examples of the British motor industry parked on the street.

So as much as I dislike my current neighbor’s parking peccadilloes, I realize that I’ve got it pretty good these days. We had another crazy neighbor up the street here in Skokie named “Milo.” He was once observed through his open windows cavorting with a topless “maid.” And he did toss off a couple of rants about strange cars parked in front of his house, and threatened  to kill his next door neighbors because they were from Pakistan. And he also dumped buckets of a liquid I believed to be urine into the storm drains. But “Milo” has tap danced off of this plane of existence to the next and it’s pretty quiet around here.

And I’m a pretty good neighbor now. I really work at it. No loud music, no disassembled automobiles (we’re down to three these days), and I haven’t needed my weed cleaned by a helpful monkey for about forty years now.

(P.S.-"Roland" and "Milo" are aliases. )