Tell us about GOOD relationships you've had with your neighbors

You know, as a respite from the usual bitching.

I used to leave next door to a woman from Central America, in the states on a student visa. I liked to listen to classical music and show tunes every Saturday morning, as I did a week’s worth of household chores, or read or wrote, or whatever. One day I realized that the wall against which my stereo was set was opposite her bedroom wall, so I asked her if my music was bothering her. She replied no, that she actually loved my taste in music and sometimes wished I would turn it up. After that she moved her stereo the the same wall, and every Saturday and Sunday we’d alternate cranking up the volume for the other’s benefit.

Anybody else have a good neighbor story to share?

When I bought my house, the front “flower bed” was a heaping mess of half-dead and overgrown juniper bushes. I lived with it for a while, but by the first summer I had my cousin come out and help me rip all of that nonsense out.

My plan was to plant grass where the juniper had been, and just sort of have an empty front yard. But my neighbor - who is an AVID gardener and has an award-winning yard - came over and offered to plan and plant a nice flower bed for me.

She did a bunch of work and put in a very nice bed with very nice plants. Definitely has an eye for design. She also gave me tips on some improvements I could make by adding a few plants from the store. In the end, it looked amazing.

It was really nice the first year, and the second. But I slowly grew to hate it. You have to water and weed flower beds, plus take care of the plants by dead-heading them and cutting them back. Not my cup of tea whatsoever.

All in all, my neighbor did a wonderful thing for me - and did it for free. But now I’m to the point where I want the flower bed gone…which is another story.

Our neighbor is a retired farmer, with lots of equipment. When he tills his garden plot, he tills ours. When he sprays his yard for weeds, he sprays ours. He always asks permission first, and he also asked for our input before he took out some bushes that separated our property. They were his bushes, but he thought we might want them left in place. We share garden veggies and homemade horseradish. His wife brought food over when I was laid up after surgery. Nice people.

For our part, we keep our dog out of his yard, and we try to keep things tidy in the yard. The guy’s a neat freak and I know he hates looking out his window and seeing a mess next door.

I had great neighbors when I lived in Cornwall. One of them was a lady taxi driver with a very thick Scottish accent. I knew her before she moved in just from riding in her cab many, many times. She was always pleasant and friendly even if I did have trouble understanding her at first. The difference in our accents was highlighted for me one day when I saw her and her daughter (about 5 yrs old) in the driveway. I said hello and was having a nice chat with Cab Lady when her daughter piped up,
“Mummy, what language is that lady speaking?”
Cab Lady replied, “She’s speaking English, just like you, dear”
Daughter thought for a moment and said, “Mummy, I like that lady’s language!”

My other neighbors were a very sweet elderly couple and an ex-police constable. I think that was the best bunch of neighbors I’ve ever had.

I was living in a four-plex in Minneapolis. I fell in the snow and ice and twisted my ankle so badly that I received a severe sprain and couldn’t put any weight on it. I had to crawl back to the apartment building on my hands and knees. I got inside and sat down on the stairs (I lived upstairs) to catch my breath.

I guess I was crying (honestly, I’m not sure) because my landlord and my downstairs neighbors both came out of their apartments. My landlord was like, “Oh my, that’s too bad,” and went back inside his place, but my downstairs neighbors insisted on taking me to the emergency room. That was a godsend because I was new in town and only knew people from work.

I had barely even met this couple before, but the husband helped me to their car, and at the ER, his wife sat with me. The wife even yelled at the PA who kept trying to get me to put weight on my bad ankle while teaching me to use the crutches. (He just wouldn’t believe a sprain was that painful.) Then they took me home and helped me get upstairs. This took 3-4 hours of their time.

I could not have been more grateful, because it was the most stressful and lonely period of my life, and I literally had no one I could have called to help me. It was also a wonderful contrast to the people who had lived in their apartment before them, who would complain to the landlord every time I turned on a fan (no AC in that building) because they could hear the vibration through the floor(!)

I ended up paying them back by cat-sitting when they went on their honeymoon.

We love our neighbors. They lent us a washer and dryer (which we are still using), don’t mind our parties and even forgave us when my roommate’s dog killed two of their chickens. We told them to take freely of our vegetable garden. We had a joint Fourth of July party. Couldn’t ask for better.

My current neighbor is a great single guy. When he mows his lawn, he typically get the 10’ or of my lawn on his side of the house. It makes perfect sense for him to do it, but it is much appreciated. When I broke my hip and my wife wanted to relocate the bed in the bedroom so that it would make it easier to get to and from the bathroom–he came over and helped her move the bed. Just a nice guy, we have had him over a few times for bbq’s and/or go out for a beer.

My old neighbor before I moved into my current wifes house was a great guy and his wife, still am friends with them. I moved in, and they immediately stopped by and introduced themselves and then invited us to their house for dinner that evening. We had lots of back and forth bbq’s between our two houses and I got to know his adult children well. He and his wife adored my daughter and they were just nice people. You know when you meet someone and you really just hit it off with them? That is how it was with these people. When I got divorced from my first wife there was a little distance put between us, but that has been quite a few years now and they actually get along now with my current wife and so things are good again. In fact having dinner with them soon.

I have a better story than my first one, about an old neighbor.

In 1978 there was a Great Blizzard in NE Ohio. My brother was 8 months old (I wasn’t born yet), and mom was home alone with him when the power went out. Dad was stuck at work.

Our neighbor plowed a path between our houses with his snow blower, collected my brother, and had my mom follow him and the baby over to his house where they had the fireplace going.

After that, those same neighbors took good care of our family. Dad was laid off the year I was born and we were broke. All of my toddler clothes were hand-me-downs from them. Even tho she worked and had 3 kids of her own, the mom looked after me when my mom had to get a job and my dad did menial labor.

They really were super neighbors. I hated that they moved when I was 8. We’re still friends with them, tho.

I finally got a neighbor who asked me before trimming the common hedges. No neighbor ever did that before, and I like the privacy of tall hedges. When I asked why they should be trimmed he showed me where they were weighing down and breaking the wooden fence on his side. So I repaired his fence and we were both happy.

I had another neighbor who’s cat would howl to get in. She said she’d bought a pet door but was too unskilled to saw into her door. I installed it and now she and I and the cat are all happier.

I had a next-door neighbor for a few years who had two kids the same age as my two kids. The kids became fast friends (and are still friends to this day). My neighbor was a great person, very kind and helpful.

She and I did a lot of favors for each other, but one incident really stands out in my mind. I had my wisdom teeth taken out, and so was going to be home all day after the procedure. The kids talked me into letting them ride the bus home that day (rather than riding it to the daycare as usual). That meant they would be home with me for a few hours until my husband came home.

Well, I had overestimated how well I would be feeling, and I was basically unable to do much more than lie in the bed. The kids were trying to behave but my son was getting the tea jug out of the refrigerator and he dropped it - so the kitchen was full of tea. When my daughter came rushing to tell me this I just said “Go get Ms. Rosa”. Not only did Rosa mop up the tea but she also took the kids to her house until my husband came home.

I still miss her. :slight_smile:

Our house is in a semi-rural area but the neighbors on both sides were super-great for the first 7 years that we lived there. I really have too many stories to list but both sets had keys to our house and checked on everything when we traveled. One set of neighbors found out that our pipes were frozen in the winter when we were gone and spent a day fixing it themselves and arranging for follow-up plumber appointments because they didn’t want our trip to be ruined. The other set was babysitting our 15 year old dog while we were in the Virgin Islands when he died. They didn’t tell us until the very end when we were stuck in Miami but they took care of everything and even brought over a tractor to dig a grave for a proper burial on our property that they shared in. I could have either set of neighbors babysit 24/7 if there was a family emergency and there once was. That is just a small sample. I helped them as much as I could as well but they are basically Jesus type figures and I trust them completely even with my own daughters. You don’t get any better neighbors than that.

One of those family’s built a true mansion down the street and moved and sold it to some of the most psychotic people I have ever met. He is a vet and she is a PETA activist that loves to have free-range cats. That has not worked out nearly as well.

We lived in our first house one town over for 10 years (Hi dropzone!) The classic situation where you didn’t appreciate what good neighbors you had until you no longer had them.

On one side was a couple with 2 kids maybe 8 and 10 when we moved in. The mom needed to increase her income, so she provided childcare for us until my wife stopped work with our 3d kid. She basically just treated them as her own kids, taking them shopping and whatever. Tough to beat a really sensible woman providing daycare nextdoor.

The other side was Bill and Pete. We couldn’t have cared less about their sexual preference - they were pleasant, maintained their property, not loud or anything else. One time they invited us to a New Year’s party. At one point they said, “We need to tell you something about ourselves - your wife might be the only biological female at the party.” I said, “Thank god, I was afraid you were going to say you were Republicans!” Was great for the kids to have such a clear example of what is and what isn’t important.

Across the street was Jim, and old retired guy with every tool ever made, who was incredibly eager to lend them or use them himself to help you out. He planted a huge garden largely just so he could share the produce. After a few years he sold to Pete, a really sweet single guy who was an electrician and helped us out on many an occasion.

As far as neighbors go, I really wish we had never moved to the somewhat “tonier” burb one town over. The worst neighbor we had there was probably equivalent to the best we have had over the past 12 years.

My neighbor one over is a retired GM manager. He taught me how to use an electric snake to clean out our sewer, which has saved us hundreds of bucks. He watches our house when we travel and we watch his. When we got the Murky News we gave him the business section and the sports pages every day. They come into visit our dogs if no one is there for the day. His wife loves dogs, and our Golden loves her more than anything.
Best of all, he got me my current job. He is friend with a guy from HR in my company, and it turned out one of the people this guy worked with was looking for someone just like me. I’ve been here 12 years now.

He bought the house between us for his daughter, so we have a nice block of friends.

Our current next door neighbors are great! Their kids and mine play together constantly. I can always count on them to let me borrow a cup of sugar or give me advice on how to make my tomato plants grow better.

But they are also friends. We attend each other’s parties, watch each other’s houses while on vacation, gossip about schools and the kids, and just hang out at each other’s houses for fun.

They are lovely people. It’s fabulous!

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! :cool:)

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. :smiley:

In 1990, when I was 25 I moved from WI to CA to become a live in nanny. I lived in Pasadena for a year. The people I worked for were whacked, especially the woman. But the next door neighbor was a saint, and helped me keep my sanity.

I talked to her over the fence every day, and even stayed at her house a few times, when I needed refuge from the insane woman I worked for.

That was almost 20 years ago, and we still correspond, and I have told her many times that I think she saved my life! Such a cool lady. Her husband was nice too, but I didn’t know him as well.

She is in the same house, but the people I worked for are long gone. She did tell me lots of funny stories about them for a few years after I left. I wish I had come up with, “The Nanny Diaries!”.

Most all of our neighbors are really wonderful people. Our house is next to the community mailbox so we have lots of opportunity to visit with the folks there, especially since the postman and I are good friends and we’re usually chatting away at delivery time. My daughter and I walk every night and we get to see folks regular then too. There are several couples that we do a lot socially with and one couple easily is among our closest of friends.

Typically we all watch out for each other and help when anyone’s ill or banged up. One really great guy is wheelechair bound. He lamented not having an exhaust turbine on his garage so I came over and installed one for him. He brough me a new pumpkin pie every week for a month. Another had to be life flighted after a bicycle accident. I love to mow so I came over and did his yard until he was able. That first time as I was mowing he shuffled out in his robe to thank me and started crying. Hell, if he cries I’m gonna tear up two so there we were, two grown men standing in the front yard all weepy while the lawnmowers chuggin’ away.

When my wife had her back surgery everyone put together a list and someone different brought us supper most every week night for about a month. We feel pretty fortunate to have the people around us that we do.

In the last place we lived, we endured a couple of years of wretchedly noisy fighting neighbors and were overjoyed when they moved out. We were apprehensive, though, when we saw that the new neighbors had a couple of little kids (we shared a wall). When we met the new folks, almost the first thing they said to us was, “Don’t worry, we’ve trained the kids not to run in the house!” Our jaws dropped, as the previous folks’ kids thundered up and down stairs all day and most of the night.

They were as good as their word, and politer, pleasanter, quieter neighbors were not to be found anywhere. Unfortunately, we had to move a few months after that due to a job situation. I still miss them very much.

We lived next door to our neighbours for a while before we finally got talking one day. I have a feeling that we initially bonded over the computer - they needed help with it, we were able to help. We started hanging out a lot and introduced $5 Wine Night once a week. We took a couple of vacations together, and had an absolute ball. When we decided we wanted to build a new house, our neighbours bought a block of land in the same street so they could move with us and we could all stay neighbours. They were great friends of ours.

When I was a kid, we lived in a house that had a little bat problem, which tended to manifest itself when my sister and I were home alone late at night. (Our mother had an active social life that often kept her away.) Also the bat portal was near the stairway, so we always seemed to get trapped in our bedrooms upstairs. Fortunately there was a upstairs phone, and there was this one sorta old (50’s) couple two doors down who could be counted on to grab a broom and dustpan, break in through the back door if necessary, and rescue us.

If only the damn things couldn’t fly…