"The more we can be in a relationship with those who might seem strange to us, the more we can feel like we're neighbors and all members of the human family."Fred Rogers
My neighborhood has changed dramatically these last few years. It is a small upper middle class (not to be skewed by the lottery winner third house down) neighborhood. We are very rural with only seven <4 acre lots on our side of the street and 4 lots on the other and one empty lot at the cul de sac. Actually, there are 3 empty lots and one that is expensive will never be buildable as it is not able to perk. More about that later.
Anyway, out of the eight homes that were here when we built on our lot about 13 years ago, four of those original neighbors have sold and moved away. We are pretty good friends with our neighbors on the left side of us but they are gone 6-7 months of the year to Florida. They have HUGE home and I anticipate they will want to live permanently in Florida as they age and time goes on unless the pandemic and politics down there change their mind. My husband is a great social animal and we have become new friends with the new neighbors on our right side, even though we are in the middle of a pandemic. He is good at making friends by dropping off plants and they have responded by dropping off banana bread and chocolate covered strawberries!
I have not met the new neighbors who own the large lot at the far end of the road near the highway, but he has built a dock for his 100K or even more expensive boat. The reason I am quoting prices here is that he must have lots of money and must be really disappointed he cannot get a home built on the river. He does come by that dock and take his boat out on the weekends. The boat is full of grandkids and a few adults. Anyway, this last weekend I got to listen to some popular style of music (loud and repetitive) while he entertained on his dock. His dock is almost a mile from my yard and yet I could hear the "noise." Why do people always assume you like their style of music?
Fortunately, it was for only several hours on a Saturday. I am a bitch and would have called the police (even though they are overworked these days with protests and pandemics) and complained if it went on and on or if it happens more often. I do not mind the occasional BBQ BUT! Even my neighbor to the left of us in the big house was polite enough to call a few years ago to let us know she was holding her church service on her front lawn and we would have "noise" for a few hours and hoped we would not mind. She is a gem! It was a one time only event and I did not mind.
To belabor this neighbor thing, I went down to my dock to take photos of our wonderful sunsets the other day and happened to look across the river to our neighbors on the other side of the river. We only know them superficially because one of them is our Postmaster. I took this photo.
They seem like such nice people...I will NEVER understand someone who likes 45 and claims he is a good leader. If your grandfather likes to walk in on 15-year-old girls naked, makes fun of the "cripple" across the street, calls people names, and demands that you do not disagree with him EVER, he is not someone you like. You may be required to be polite, but you are not going to vote for him for dogcatcher.
Ok, my last little note on neighbors. As my readers may know, my son lives in a suburb near the city area of D.C. You may (or may not) have read in the news about a 50-year-old white guy on a bike confronting three teenagers who were putting up protest flyers in support of the black lives matter movement in a park in that area. Two were 17-year-old girls and one was a 16-year-old boy. The biker assaulted the two girls tearing the flyers from their hands and then rammed his bicycle into the boy before riding away. Since the boy was smart enough to film the assault on his cell phone, the man was identified and arrested. ( I do not know if the teenagers were black or white, but that does not matter!) The reason I am writing about this is I got a text message from my son today that this man lives a few doors down from my son's house and there was going to be a protest in the neighborhood as a result, so he wanted me to be aware and not be concerned!
I had to add an addendum to this. When my son stretched his and his new wife's money and bought his rather small house (smaller than 90% of the houses in his neighborhood) I was pleased because the area looked so stable and economically safe and middle class. I do remember saying I was a little disappointed because it was certainly "white bread."
You cannot pick your neighbors, but you hardly expect this!
