Category: In the neighborhood

A hard rain

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 2 Comments
It's a damp fall morning in Bibleburg, and happily for us, all our worldly goods are inside.
It's a damp fall morning in Bibleburg, and happily for us, all our worldly goods are inside.

The gods are bowling. We can hear them up there like so many really big Lebowskis trying to convert a 7-10 split. And somebody up there must’ve spilled his beverage, because we’re getting our first precip’ in the better part of quite some time. Hallelujah. A trail ride these days leaves my bike coated with a fine brown dust and sets me to wheezing.

The boisterous young swine who apparently have been evicted from the crumbling rental across the alley will not welcome a bracing rain, however. A crew of laborers spent the past few days piling their goods in the tiny back yard, and a mighty big pile it was, too.

The owner has a tragic history and according to Rumor Control was no better at picking husbands than she is at picking tenants. We’ve seen quite a parade of folks come and go at her rental property, most of them night-crawling yowlers who remind me very much of me at a certain age, only with more tattoos. Dogs were much in evidence, and once a child, but mostly it was a progression of shaggy young men with no visible means of support.

The cops paid a visit to the place recently, flanked by a fire truck and ambulance, and shortly thereafter the inhabitants vanished, leaving strangers to stack their worldly goods outdoors. A metal bed frame disappeared overnight, as did a bicycle. A battered Hotpoint range, boxes of cassette tapes and magazines, a stained mattress and a scattering of clothes remained when we sneaked a peek this morning.

They weren’t there for long, though. Word spread and a flock of scavengers in pickup trucks spent most of the morning picking through the refuse for objets d’art. Looks like the recession still has its hooks in some folks, no matter what The Wall Street Journal says.

Last but not least came the trash truck for the items nobody else wanted, even for free. There’s something kind of sad about that.

Still, there’s also something to be said for walking away from a fuck-up instead of packing it along with you like luggage. Here’s another bit of Thomas McGuane, from “Something To Be Desired.” Lucien Taylor and his estranged father are indulging in a bit of unauthorized camping, and as many things do in a McGuane novel, it ends badly.

His father circled the tent slowly, digging a finger into his disordered hair, inventorying the camp, the camp that a few days ago had been erected as a gateway to an improved world.

“We’re looking at under a hundred bucks,” said his father, standing at their camp. “Let’s walk away from it.”

In the neighborhood

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments

As a child of the military I haven’t had much opportunity to tap into that neighborhood feeling so many of you enjoyed while growing up. We moved regularly while the old man was active duty, and once he finally put down roots I stayed in the breeze, the proverbial bad seed. I’ve lived in something like 18 different towns, 10 states and two countries. Hell, I’ve lived in five different parts of Bibleburg between 1967 and right this minute.

But I feel at home where I am now, and it’s not a simple matter of nifty real estate. It’s about people. Community.

Folks around here help each other out. One of us gets sick, another cooks for her. When the patient is back on her feet, the chef scores a little gratis landscaping. Do a little light snow shoveling, you’re liable to get repaid with a platter of corned beef from one neighbor and some homegrown greens and tomatoes from another. That sort of thing. We stop what we’re doing right this minute to chat each other up. Sometimes this means blocking traffic. Nobody calls the cops, or even honks. Instead, they join right in.

John Crandall came home from the hospital today, and his wife, Kathy, had asked if I would help wheel him the final few meters. I agreed, but not without my own internal reservations. Some stairs were involved, and the last time I took the lead on hauling a wheeled something up a flight of stairs I blew out my back (large refrigerator, small college, not my neighborhood, a whole other story).

But a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do, so when the Crandalls rolled past with a honk, I headed for the door — just in time to see one of the neighbors crossing the street toward me. In some areas this might be cause for concern, but here it was Will, a soccer fiend who dabbles in track, weight-lifting, cycling and good deeds, and just the kind of guy you want around in this situation. I’ve seen him drop whatever he was doing to help a neighbor carry some groceries at an age when many a kid wouldn’t drop the Xbox if it were on fire, sprouting tentacles and shrieking “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh C’thulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn,” and a year of college hasn’t done him any harm the way it did me.

Will’s mom, who does her own share of good works, apparently had suggested to Will that John and Kathy might need more than one portly, bald-headed tosspot to get the man into his house without further need for medical assistance. So we strolled over to the Crandalls, leveraged John up the walk and into his house without incident.

Kathy went for a fresh bushel of meds, Will and I hung around and chatted for a bit, the landscaper popped round to say hi, and then we all went back about our business. Will’s was something like running up the Incline, which recently killed a guy. Mine was grocery shopping. Easier on the legs, harder on the belly.

I suppose I should’ve taken a picture. But honestly, this sort of thing happens around here so often that it’s hardly newsworthy.