The Red Brick Times

Did I ever tell you about my next door neighbor? He was the one who had the lot that sat on the street that holds the house that I built. When I was negotiating with him for the lot, I learned a lot about him. He rode a motorcycle. He was tight, mean, pinched and mendacious to a fault. Everywhere I heard imprecations and diatribes about him. He built houses and owned extensive rental property. Contractors in the county had stories about him. I made my dealings with him friendly, but cautious, correct, proper and completely circumspect. When I cleared the lot to build, I said nothing when the wood I had promised to the contractor vanished overnight and turned up, cut into stove lengths, in his rack on the side of his house next to mine (the orange paint blaze marks were still visible on the bark). When they moved from another house down the street (that he owned) into the house next door (that he owned) the carpenters at my house were treated to the sight of a huge, old-fashined iron safe on wheels being trundled between the houses in the bucket of a front-end loader. My father teased him: "I've never known anyone with so much money that he needed a loader to carry it all." He looked suspiciously at everyone and came over less often after that. When the plumber was working there, he asked my neighbor if he was the same person who had stiffed the plumber for a contracted job 25 years previously (he was, and kept completely away from then on). As a next door neighbor, I keep silent as the dog, on a long rope, soils my front yard (it is really a very friendly dog). I catch the dog for them when it escapes, when after two ot three hours of them yelling at it to "get back here", they give up and go inside. I come out and sit quietly on my front step, and the dog happily comes over to be petted and I make much over it and put it back on the rope. I close the window when the son-in-law leaves his diesel truck idling for long periods of time late at night or early in the morning. When they re-contoured their yard and removed all of the gutters and downspouts to direct the rain runoff from his roof away from his foundation into my yard, I held my peace because I knew that the swale and storm drain basin that I installed when I built the place would handle it. I have seen the ambulance there several times over the last year, and the mobile oxygen truck has been coming regularly to refill cylinders. The last few times I saw him, he was dressed in a shabby robe, tottering down the driveway to the mailbox, trailing an oxygen bottle on a cart. Yesterday there was an obituary in the paper about his death. It said that he was a pilot and certified flight instructor, that he had degrees in architecture and electrical engineering, that he was a builder, landlord and business owner, and that he had a whole bunch of sons, daughters, stepsons, stepdaughters, a dozen grandchildren and great grandchildren. I never saw any of them over there but the step daughter and step son-in-law, who worked for him.

Now here's the thing: I have all the same background - aviation, engineering, construction. I like a good bargain and tend to be close with a dollar. I ride motorcycles. The similarities, the differences; so many, so great. What happened to turn this accomplished and technically able person into the picture of suspicion and angry isolation? What drove him to this end? I know next to nothing about his existence or history, stories of his family or childhood, details of his life. It was decidedly uncomfortable to be around him. I could not relax in his presence and made it a point to be neighborly from a distance, to talk in the side yard with his wife as she mowed the yard or got her touring motorcycle out for a ride. I like it that the dog knows me on sight and gets nothing from kindness from me (it is a VERY nice dog but needs more attention and affection). How will I wind up my days when I am 76 and poorly? I am going to the funeral tomorrow, not because I feel guilty at a lack of humanity, or because of good deeds left undone until too late, but because I know that the differences collapse to zero when everything comes to an end.
Posted 9:59 PM by Andy (0) comments

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