The "You Should Hear About MY NEIGHBORS" Story

It was an ordinary day. I had just finished replacing the spout on my neighbor's garage. Seems the kids knocked the spout down while shooting baskets at the net I had put up on my half of the garage. When we lived on Janet Ave. in Grandview Heights, we had a semi-detached house with semi-detached garages that stood about 40 feet from the back of the house. The garages opened onto an alley that ran parallel with Janet Avenue. Our neighbors were a couple slightly older than us who had two teenage children that never came out of the house. They eventually moved out and left their mom and dad alone in the house. Most times we never saw them either. A strange pair so they were. My family consisted of my wife and me and the three kids. We were an active family. We played ball in the back yard, had picnics in the yard, had millions of pets, and generally used the property to the maximum. I painted every few years, mowed the grass regularly, shoveled the snow immediately after it stopped and Carol kept the place looking great with flowers. I even volunteered to mow their grass, but Delores told me not to, since she thought Fred could use the exercise. Washed the cars when they were dirty and trimmed the shrubs when needed. Our neighbors stayed inside most of the time. Not once in 29 years did they touch the outside of the house!! Not a drop of paint touched any wood on the house. NOT KIDDING!! Very seldom did they shovel the snow. They decided to have a picnic in the backyard one time and had to mow a path through the foot high grass so they could play croquette. Mowed from one wicket to the next. If you would hit the ball too hard, it could get lost in the remainder of the yard. Then they put a large piece of carpet over another part of the tall grass so they could put a picnic table and chairs on it. Every few years Fred would decide to trim his forsythia bush between our properties in the rear and totally butcher it. When their car would wear out, they would put it in the alley behind their place. A neighbor finally called the police about the old cars which were behind their house. They were constantly vandalized and were a menace in the neighborhood. Police made them get rid of them. We finally put a six foot high fence between the properties so we wouldn't have to see the rear of his property. A neighbor and fellow teacher of mine was good friends with Fred and Delores. She more than once told me the horror stories about the inside of their house. There was a cold air return vent in the floor of the living room which was rotted and they just put a large carpet over it instead of fixing it. The ceiling of the kitchen fell in because of a leak in the upstairs bathroom, and they never replaced it. The list goes on and on. But the one item that always bothered me was the piles of newspapers stored in the basement next to their oil burner. What a fire hazard that was. Their half of the garage hadn't seem paint in over a quarter of a century and the squirrels had chewed through their end of the garage. It also was piled full of newspapers. And then ...... the call came from Delores about the kids knocking down the spout on their half of the garage. There was no need for a spout anyway, but with all the disrepair on the house, the fact that a fallen spout could bring her to tears was amazing to Carol and me. I took the spout off my half and moved it to her half, and she was once again happy. About five years before we moved, I decided to put some heated cable on the third floor roof to keep the ice and snow from accumulating and running into the back of the house. I asked them if they wanted me to do their half of the roof also. You bet they did. Would pay me for the materials as soon as I was done. I finished the job and it worked well. More on this in a second. We each had a rear entrance into our basements. Both had cellar doors on them. Mine was metal and my neighbor's was rotten wood. In the common wall in the basement by the rear door, about a foot from the floor and two feet from the cellar door was a small hole that must have gone through to their basement. Every time we had heavy rains we had a stream of water shooting about two feet into out basement through the hole. It was so comical that I never did anything to correct it but put a bucket under it when it rained. Well, we eventually tired of our neighbors and since we couldn't outlive them, we decided to move. We plotted our plan of attack. We knew we had to move in the fall when the shrubs would cover the front of their house. The fence in the back masked their backyard from view. Worked! Sold the house for full amount on the first day it was for sale. Had three offers even. It has resold 3 times since we moved about 12 years ago now. And .... it's the same neighbors in the other side. As I was packing the U-Haul for moving, Fred wondered over to say good-bye and handed me $15. "What's that for?" I said. "My part of the wire you put on the roof," was the answer. First time I had seen him out of the house in months. Guess I was lucky he remembered. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.