If you don’t have a “ladder guy” in your neighborhood then there is a good chance that you are “ladder guy”.
I’m glad you’ve updated us on him Larry . He’s almost a guy I wouldn’t mind being worked into a role on a sit-com.
Isn’t it funny to secretly watch other peoples quirks, which might not be quirks at all if we weren’t so secret about it. But I admit this way is much more fun.
I wonder what he thinks of you? Maybe you’re “overly interested guy who walks past my house for seemingly no other reason than to watch me on my ladder!”
My neighbors are fairly quiet and normal, with the exception of the occasional Redneck Soap Opera. You know: who’d cheating on whom, who is on crank, that sort of thing.
This reminds me of one of my favorite newspaper sitings ever.
There was a story in the Boston Globe about a man who had recently died. The next day, there was a correction in the paper [paraphrased]:
“Due to a reporting error, a story in yesterday’s Globe incorrectly stated that Joe Schmoe loved to spend weekends in his yard with his pet bobcat. Joe Schmoe’s hobby was using his Bobcat skid-steer loader.”
I’m sure my neighbors thought that Mr. Snicks and I were nuts recently.
We never got around to taking our Christmas lights off the house last year. Well, we removed most, but the last bit of garland stayed on all year. See, we have a two story house with a very high peaked roof. The garland, wrapped with both big and little white lights, goes up one side to the peak, then down the other. It’s probably 35 feet, all told. We didn’t take it down last year because when it wasn’t way too cold, it was too warm. Mr. Snicks is proud of his lawn and doesn’t want to put ruts in it from the, yes, extendable ladder that we’d have to use to take the lights down.
So, this year we go to put on the remaining Christmas lights and check those that we’ve left up all year. Dammit! One of the strands is out on that stupid garland. Up goes the ladder, down comes the garland, quick fix to wrap it with new lights (because I’m far too lazy to actually fix the thing; I’ll do that when we take the garland down ), up goes the garland again.
He collects buckets. If there is a bucket in a pile of junk by the side of the road, he will get out of his car and take it.
My mom’s friend had a bucket in her garage that she kept empty cat food cans in. She invited Bucket Guy over, to have lunch or something. They’re pretty good friends, I guess. Anyway, after he left, she went out into her garage and found her bucket had disappeared, and all the cat food cans were stacked neatly on the ground.
So she called Bucket Guy and said, “I need you to give me my bucket back.” And he said, “You know I can’t do that.” He actually took her bucket and then refused to give it back.
She decided that it wasn’t worth it to fight about it, and she got some other container for her cat food cans, and Bucket Guy kept the bucket.
If your mom wants to really drive Bucketman nuts, she should get a bunch of odd buckets at garage sales and such, and display them in front of /her/ house. With any luck, he’ll start checking his collection for the “missing” buckets.
In my town, we just have Johnny Walker Red, a red headed fellow that walks up and down main street. He used to be rather heavy, but now he’s thin, and when he’s walking, he’ll say hello, and be walking so fast, you won’t have time to greet him back. He’s odd, but friendly.
Brilliant! Please do keep updating us on Ladder Guy’s adventures. I’m strangely fascinated. Oh, yes, I’ll have some more Franz, too! How many head injuries does it take…
That’s my dad, on his knees picking crabgrass by hand. And blowing the leaves off his driveway, until every. single. leaf. is gone.
Of course, he’s a vast improvement over his neighbors. Like the guy who would hang his dead deer outside our kitchen window, and left a 20’ ladder propped up against the front of his house for a full decade, and has an unused RV trailer sitting on blocks in his front yard for at least 2 full decades. And his other neighbor who cut down a bunch of trees in his front yard to create a fish pond/mosquito nest and is currently spending a couple of years refinishing the bottom of some crapass boat that’s upside down in his lawn, and has a giant pile of firewood/rats nest conveniently covered by a bright blue tarp in his front lawn. Big front lawns around there, lots of space for junk.
I’ll take the neurotic maintainer over the lazy slob anyday.
I remember “Foil Lady” from the church I grew up attending. She saved every freakin’ bit of aluminum foil brought in the church as covers for covered dish dinners and such. She’d rinse em off, fold em neatly and take it home with her. If you wanted to recover your leftovers with the foil you brought, you had to hide it from her. The first thing she would do is collect all the foil. I always imagined she had a room in her house covered in aluminum foil.
There was also “License Plate Guy” in the neighborhood I grew up in. Back then, everyone got a new license plate every year instead of the little stickers for the plate we get now. Also, back then, in GA, all license plates had to be bought between January 1 and May 1. License Plate Guy would go around the neighborhood collecting all the old license plates. He then hung them all over his garage. Inside and out. A lovely sight it was.
Then there was “Coke Lady.” Everyday she went to the neighborhood store for a six pack of Coca Cola in the little bottles. She never took the old bottles back. She kept them, in the little six pack cardboard cartons, in her garage. Stacks and stacks of em.
I grew up in such a strange neighborhood, it’s just a wonder I turned out all normal like.
), up goes the garland again.