We have been pretty lucky with next door neighbors. When we lived in Illinois, our next door neighbor was an older couple that had been in the neighborhood since it was first developed - 1978. They had two older kids who no longer lived with them and were very welcoming from the beginning. It was autumn when we first moved in and I was raking leaves when Daryl offered to let me use his leaf blower, out of the blue. The only negative, and it isn't really a negative, is that you couldn't help but feel like your lawn wasn't up to snuff. In the summer, it seemed like Darryl was mowing it at least three times a week, bagging the lawn clippings and weedwacking like a mad-man! In the fall, there wasn't even a single leaf on his lawn. He had a routine, blow the leaves, wait 20 minutes, blow the leaves again, wait 20 minutes, blow the leaves again. He would repeat this all through autumn. Just when autumn was about to end, he would then mow the lawn with the bagger on to ensure that even the tiniest leaf molecule was caught. Similarly, in winter, no matter how deep the snowfall or how cold it was, there was never a speck of ice or snow on his driveway. Even if I got up at 6 am, his driveway would look like it had been cleared for hours!
Perhaps the highlight of the year was the annual Christmas party. Every year they would throw this party and it was quite the fun time. They would ask people to bring side dishes but they would have all the main food catered, and they even arranged for Santa to come and visit the children. The other highlight is that he would convert his garage into a smoking den. It was a tradeoff between ventilation and heat, because it was Chicago in the middle of the winter. So he would have a kerosene heater on full blast and the garage door cracked with a window in the garage also cracked. He would set up a couple of card tables and folding chairs and even though it was chilly and somewhat uninviting, it seemed to attract a good deal of people. One of the few occasions I got to smoke a cigar! Even if you were not smoking, you probably got the equivalent in second hand smoke. I greatly enjoyed myself. After we had lived there for a couple of years, Daryl asked if he could park his cars in our driveway to facilitate the smoking lounge. How could I say no. Even though the parties usually ran pretty late, with a fair amount of booze consumed, he was always up at something like 4:30 in the morning to make sure that we were not blocked in!
Our new next door neighbors are an older couple, probably in their 70s-80s. One day last week, they invited us to come over for some sort of get together. I first met Wally a couple of months back when we had our one significant snowfall. We got about 8 inches, which is a lot for this area, and it was pretty heavy and wet. I was out shoveling. Wally came out with this little electric snowthrower. Amazingly, it handled the job pretty well. You couldn't go full speed with it, but it was definitely faster than a shovel. So Wally did a little bit of his driveway, and then told me he was going to go upstairs to sleep for a bit, but that he would leave his snowthrower out and I was welcome to use it. By this time I had almost finished my driveway, but I figured I would give it a shot. Apparently, old Wally was not really into replacing extension cords, because the first time I went to move the cord I got a pretty good shock. After that, I tried to use a stick or something insulated, but still got a shock here and there. I wonder if Wally had just got used to it.
Interestingly, when Wally's wife had suggested it to my wife, she had made it very clear that we were coming over for snacks only, that there would absolutely not be a meal. So we prepared accordingly. It was an interesting afternoon. First, they must have set the thermostat at 85+! It was amazingly warm. Even more amazing, they were both wearing pants and long sleeves, in fact Wally was even wearing a tie! I have come to realize that the old guy loves wearing a tie, I have rarely seen him without one. So we settled in to have some wine and cheese, and Wally really liked to let the vino flow! It seemed like he was gulping down glasses. I think he is a pretty funny guy anyway, but with the booze in his system he was cracking me up. He was telling stories about his youth and how he had been quite the player and his pursuit of his now wife. He also had not gotten the memo about the no meal policy because after we had been there for a couple of hours, he suggested that we should keep the party going by ordering a pizza! We begged off, since we were really pretty hot by now and the girls seemed to be getting bored. However, he then told a great joke. I hope I can do it justice here. He explained that the college he went to, primarily male, allowed you to take certain classes at the predominately female college. You had to get a pass though, called an inter-school pass. He then deadpanned that "after a few weeks the word 'school' was dropped from the name!"
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