When I lived in Lancaster my dad was on great terms with the neighbours. Tom lived next door to the east, and he and dad were always in each other’s garage. (Tom was always wearing cut-off jean shorts and grease and nothing else, carrying a mug of coffee or a beer and a cigarette.) Bill didn’t actually live next door to the west, but that’s where he had a house.
When we moved there when I started high school the yards were mostly desert. That is, if you looked at a yard and then looked at the surrounding desert there was no difference. Red ant holes, tumbleweeds, scraggly grass-like plants, other desert plants, and sand. Dad’s and Tom’s front yards actually had “lawns”, but they were pretty sorry-looking. But the back yard was desert.
One of the first things dad did was to tear down the picket fence between his front lawn and Tom’s (with Tom’s approval, of course). Then he put tons of fertilizer on the lawn and planted new grass. He and Tom would take turns mowing the whole, now joined, front yard.
It was one of my after-school chores to go into the back yard and pull weeds by hand. Then I’d rake the strip I’d completed and pick the weeds I’d missed. Then rake again. Then pick again. After a while the whole back yard was weed-free. A patio was poured and dad built a sturdy roof from scrap lumber fromt he dismantled DMV building. (When it snowed heavily one year, neighbours’ patios collapsed – but not dad’s!)
A cinder block wall went up between dad’s and Tom’s to replace the ugly wormwood fence. Then a retaining wall in back made a home for the strawberries (and eventually, six peach trees). Finally, a cinderblock wall was erected between dad’s and Bill’s.
Bill reminded me of a character from a 1960s sit-com. Rail-thin, slacks and shirt, pencil moustache. I could see him as a forest ranger. Since Bill was never home, he gave dad and Tom permission to keep surplus vehicles behind his house. Dad and Tom put in a concrete driveway over there. After dad died, we sold his house to Tom.
So I’m getting an MGB. I have no place to keep it. Why not see if Bill is on one of his infrequent visits to his house? If not, then I can ask Tom if Bill is still allowing cars to be stored on his property.
I drove up to the old neighbourhood and got there about ten in the morning yesterday. Tom’s garage door was shut, which is unusual since he’s always working in there, but ten ayem can still be considered early in the day. I knocked on the door and Tom’s sone-in-law answered. "Is Tom here, "I asked?
“Oh. Tom died a couple of months ago.”
Apparently he’d been laid off from his job and moved to Florida to continue working in the space program. He was to meet a friend for coffee but didn’t show up. After a day, the friend was nervous and called the police. Tom had suffered a heart attack and died. He was 58.
I found out Tom’s youngest daughter is 19 now, and has a one-year-old child. Damn! Last time I saw her she was – what? Twelve? Thirteen?
The little girl across the street is 20 now, and her mom’s moved away. Other people have left. A couple have died. The neighbourhood looks the same, but it’s changed more than I would have thought it would in just three years since dad died.
The weird thing is the “kids”. It seems they’ve grown up. Everyone has gotten older except for me! How weird is that?
Well, anyway… I left a note in Bill’s mailbox asking him if I could park a vehicle there.
