Neighbors (Neighbours for Canadians)

This is not the house mentioned but it is one in the same  neighborhood that must be for sale, so I could find a photo.


Over all the years and all the places I’ve lived, I’ve had wonderful and certainly interesting relations with my neighbors. In each place I have had unique experiences, both close and removed, depending upon where we lived.

In Michigan, no matter where I was, the neighbor relations were coolest. That could have been the different situation I found myself living in, or it could be that the neighborhood culture in Michigan is in fact a bit different than the other places.

I often write here about my next door neighbors, sometimes in glowing terms and sometimes with great jocularity, but it is always well meaning and never mean spirited.

Since they are prone to read these pages, I must mention that this is not about them!

As I began to ponder neighbors as a topic at about 5:00 a.m. this morning, a flood of stories poured into my head from its recesses. There are so many neighborly tales to tell, some of them defy telling, and some are way too intimate for me to embarrass myself or any former or current neighbor. Perhaps, should I leave a “kiss and tell” book, where names will be named. At this time we will continue to keep our PG rating.

I do have crime related dramas and a drug deal gone awry story, but I’ll save such for another time. I thought I’d start with a small drama, one not even involving me.

I left my family home (I was asked to go) and moved to a small, about to be torn down property in downtown Birmingham, Michigan. My wife and kids stayed in the house for a few years. We sort of knew the neighbors; at least we knew the older couple next door and one or two of the neighbors across the street. As the boys grew older, and I was gone, my former wife began to know the neighbors across the street because they did not appreciate teen aged boys and their friends causing property damage and general mayhem in the neighborhood.

Soon after I was remarried my now ex-wife remarried, and since she and her spouse both had homes, they decided to sell both homes and buy one together. After her house was sold she thought she should do the neighborly thing and visit the older couple next door and let them know she was moving and have a nice goodbye conversation.

She walked next door to say goodbye, and rang the bell. A woman she had never seen before answered the door. She asked for the neighbors and found out that they had moved away two year before!