Neighbor’s young (40’s) wife died of cancer last month. Even though he has a chip on his shoulder and hard to like, and his wife was shy and didn’t really have friends in the neighborhood, almost every family on our road showed up at the memorial service.
We just had a neighborhood barbecue for the new family who just moved here plus a farewell for the family who had to vacate that house under sad circumstances.
Yesterday a neighbor called and said he saw something run across the road into the woods and it was about the size of my new puppy, was my puppy at home? My puppy being asleep on the floor, we decided it was probably a bobcat.
My husband, Jesse, would often leave the headlights in my car on since he drives a car which automatically turned the headlights off. My neighbor would always come knock on our door and tell us about it. It was particularly helpful since she knew I was going to go into labor any second and Jesse’s car wasn’t very reliable.
Also, when Jesse died, she was there anytime I needed her. She lost her husband four years ago and knew the pain and confusion was I experiencing. She cleaned my home, arranged my home for family and friends, brought food over, and cried with me.
I just moved in and my yard looks really crappy. When I’m knocking down my weeds with the mower I cross the street and take care of an old widow’s lawn. I always feel uncomfortable when she comes outside to thank me, I wish I had a silent ninja mower and I could do it at night so nobody had to know. I mean, it’s a nice thing to do, it’s probably the right thing to do, but I mostly do it to even things out for how blighted my yard looks and because it’s what I see when I’m doing dishes at the sink.
In 2003 when the big bushfires hit Canberra I was about 50Km south on a farm getting ready to run a camp. We were prevented from getting back by a smaller fire that had cut the highway about 1/2 way home.
I knew from the radio that my suburb was under direct threat. Before our cell phone reception went out completely (towers burning down combined with an overloaded system) I was able to get a call through to my parents and my dad went over to get the dog. When he got there the place was OK but had been under ember attack, burning leaves falling etc. My neighbour had plugged the roof drains and filled my gutters with water to stop burning debris from getting into the ceiling space.
Got him a case of beer to say thanks.
I live in a cul-de-sac and we have a street party each Xmas, keep an eye on each others place when we go on holidays, collect mail or sign for parcels. When our second son was born we got home fom the hospital to find our front lawn cut and some meals made for us. Good people.
Our neighbors keep chickens and provide us with all the fresh eggs we want. Another neighbor keeps us supplied with real maple syrup. And when the hurricane hit last year, we all kept tabs on one another until life went back to normal.
When I was still married to the ex we struck up such a great friendship with our neighbors that we took vacations together two separate years. When we bought a block of land in a subdivision less than 2 miles away and told them of our plans to build, they were initially devastated, and then they actually went out and bought a block in the same street so we could still be neighbors. This was in no way as creepy as it could sound
Now I’ve moved to a different town with my new partner and we’ve got great neighbors again. Kevin and Dianne put bags of home grown veggies over the fence from time to time. We respond with eggs (our six chooks lay far more than we can keep up with). A couple of times recently our eggs have met with a gift of hand knitted clothes for the kids - really, really nice clothes at that! Kev’s offered to look after the dog and the chooks if we go away anywhere. They’re just the best people.
Another of our neighbours has taken to leaving bags of fresh oranges from his tree as a thank you for the eggs I’ve dropped over to him, and he’s used his earth moving equipment to turn our impassible wreck of a driveway into something that’s solid and doesn’t dissolve when it rains.
Our neighbors to the left have two nice little kids who’ve befriended my shy daughter, and the three of them have had a great time playing together.
We feel very lucky in the neighbors we have at the moment.
Most of my current neighbors are really cool, which is odd because I live in a low-end apartment complex, and over the years the majority of my neighbors have been less than desirable.
The guy across the hall from me has jump-started my car (I have returned that favor!), will stop door-to-door people in the hallway and tell them to not knock on my door since I work third shift, and signs for package deliveries when I’m out. The guy downstairs with the big scary dog comes to my door to let me know my headlights are on, and loves taking a “walk” with his dog whenever he sees strangers milling around in the parking lot near the neighbor’s cars. He’s kind of the neighborhood watch. Both upstairs neighbors are polite to a fault; they run to grab the door for you if you’re carrying anything, offer to help carry groceries upstairs and even grabbed one of my bags of trash and took it to the dumpster without even asking. One of them also goes around the units in our part of the apartment building and gives out pastries every Sunday morning.
When any of the neighbors has car problems, we all tend to gather and help each other. If you’ve got your hood propped open, you’ll eventually have three or four guys come out, each hauling their sets of tools and something’s gonna get fixed (even if it’s not what you were trying to fix). The neighborhood watch guy recently had a flat tire, which can get the car towed from the complex in less than a day. I’m still not sure which neighbor did it, but someone went out, got a tire and changed the flat. The guy went around trying to figure out who had done it, wanting to repay the favor, and never did find out who had done it.
