I have awesome neighbors. And by that, I mean, pretty much everyone who lives on my block, even the renters.
One neighbor, two houses down, approached me a few months ago and asked if I ever drove my truck. I have two vehicles and obviously, can only drive one at a time. It looks like my truck sits in front of my house and is never used. (I drive it sometimes on weekends when I need to haul stuff.) He is also an avid gardener and wanted to borrow my truck from time to time to haul mulch or compost or supplies… He’s got several gardens around town and naturally, he has to get to them to plant, compost, mulch, water, harvest, etc. I thought about it for about 0.00002 seconds and said, “Sure! You can have it any time you want!”
My truck needs to be driven more than it is because the more it runs, the better it runs. So he borrows my truck about once a week or so and in return, he’s helped me eradicate a horrible weed from my yard, given me eggs from his chickens, traded plants, seeds, and hauls mulch or compost to my house if I want it. It’s become very much a give-and-take relationship, very fair, and it turns out, he and his wife are pretty friggin’ cool to boot. She’s a writer so we talk a lot about that stuff. He’s a musician and I can talk about music all day long. We’ve ended up being good friends and of course, I save all my best treats for his kids at Halloween. (They get crayons AND candy!
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The neighbors across the street ask me about plants and yesterday I gave them a huge bunch of rosemary when I cut my shrub back. They gave me an old crutch to use as a scaffold for a climbing vine.
The little old lady next to them called me last Sunday and asked for help with her TV. It seems her remote was not cooperating with her. I put some clothes on and trudged over there, hangover and all, flipped on her TV, made sure everything worked, and went on my merry way. She gave me a bunch of candy. Why do little old ladies always have candy?
The neighbors next to me, an older retired couple, have helped me remove some banana trees that I decided I hated, and keep an eye on my house when I travel. We pick up each other’s mail when someone is out of town. They have accepted packages for me and then will deliver them as soon as they see me pull into my driveway.
I have walked more than one dog back home, when they occasionally make an unauthorized getaway, and I have fed more than one neighbor’s cat when they appeared on my front porch looking hungry. Some of them have walked the neighborhood with me looking for my Houdini Cat when he makes a break for it.
All of these people generally mind their own business and maintain appropriate boundaries, but I am confident that, in a crisis, I could bang on any one of their doors in the middle of the night if I needed help. It seems a little 1950s, but it’s a really great community, with everyone watching out for each other, no property line dispute dramas, everyone helps each other out. I didn’t think there were still neighborhoods like this in this country anymore, but I have been disabused of this notion. It’s a great place to live and I wouldn’t trade my neighbors for anything.
In fact, I bought my house from one of these people. I was living across the street in a rented house and was talking to another neighbor about my house-hunting woes. He mentioned that the people across the street were building a new place and would be selling theirs soon. So I marched over there to confirm this rumor and the homeowner gave me an on-the-spot tour of the place. I fell in love immediately (the house has a GREENHOUSE! Nirvana!) and bought the place without it ever having been listed. A FSBO sign never popped up in the yard and when I moved, I literally moved with a hand truck, 20 feet across the street. The other neighbors, of course, offered to let me use their truck to move but I said no thanks. 