From Veeduber@aol.com Fri Aug 11 04:15:47 1995
msgnum: msg13410
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 1995 05:12:01 -0400
From: Veeduber_at_aol_dot_com
Subject: f/: Neighbors
Neighbors
Since Old Man Foster died back in '66 the place next door has
fallen on hard times. His son came over from Borrego and sold
off about half the acreage and moved into the house but he was a
barber and we already had two in town and it's not that big a
town, or at least it wasn't back then. He finally had to sell
out and move. I never got to know him. They was only here a
couple of years and I was in the Navy then and it didn't help
that I sported a beard, then and now. Barbers have a natural
dislike for beards.
After that, the Foster place really went to hell, first bought by
a bunch of hippies who were going to live off the land, except
none of them knew a thing about farming, nor much about work,
spending most of their time talking about things they didn't
understand which was just about everything, and smoking funny-
smelling cigarettes. They lasted about two hungry years, the
last one living mostly out of our garden. Then there was the
rock group, flush with cash and eager for a place in the country
where they could play loud music day and night. It took about
two years to sue them into silence. Three times. The third time
the judge slapped them with a fine so big they decided it was
time for another World Tour and left one night without even
saying good-bye. Or locking the doors. Or paying the fine.
Our next new batch of neighbors were quiet as the grave. Sorta
stand-offish. Lots a coming and going, always at night. Lotsa
UPS deliveries of chemicals and laboratory apparatus. Then the
ether exploded and put their speed-cooking chemist in the
hospital and didn't do the house much good either. Me and the
other neighbors put out the fire; we're in the country and it was
all volunteer back then. Don't know what happened to the owners.
They dumped their buddy at the door of the Emergency Room and
kept right on going.
After that the place stood vacant for a couple of years, slowly
going to ruin. Got broke into my wetbacks who let their cook-
fire get away from them and burnt off the west end of the back
porch before we could get it out. They was cooking up one of the
neighbors prize Nubian goats. We're all afraid of fire up here
on the hill, what with no water to speak of the closest help some
distance away. After the second fire we started taking turns,
checking on the place at night, chasing away the lovers and the
wetbacks and the what-nots.
That's why I throwed down on the new owners with a shotgun, I
though they were burglars or Messicans or some damn thing. It
was only loaded with bird-shot so I snuck up good and close
before I announced myself. He just about had a heart attack and
she peed all down her leg when I shouted "Hands up, you
motherlovers!" Strange car, middle of the night. It seemed the
thing to do. Except I didn't say lovers. But they got my drift.
The For Sale sign went up about six months later, right after the
coyotes chased their cat up a tree and ate it. City cats never
believe how well a coyote can climb.
The School-Teacher Family was nice enough. Man and his wife,
both teachers, one little boy about six. They wanted to get to
know us and we was willing but the spiders got in the way.
I'm no naturalist but I'm naturally curious and we got some
really strange spiders up here on the hill. There's a big green
one with brown spots that makes these beautiful webs, some as big
as a bed sheet, nets his dinner then eats the damn thing and
makes a new one. There's another spider looks pretty much the
same except he's mostly brown with green spots, makes a web about
the same size. But damn if he don't patch his web instead of
eating it. That got me curious as to which is the better
strategy, a new web or a patched one, so I started watching those
guys real close. The spiders hide-out during the day but you can
tell one web from the other because the Patcher always has an odd
number of radials in his web while the Eater has an even number.
Each time I'd find one of their webs I'd figure out who it
belonged to, measure the web then come back after dark and
measure the spider, keeping track of which kind grew the fastest.
I was hunkered down in the weeds counting the radials of a new
spider web I'd discovered when Mrs. Teacher and the boy comes
down the drive. I was keeping track of the radials using a
mechanical pencil as a pointer, counting my way around the clock
of the web as they drove by. Real slow. Heads turning. I gave
them a friendly wave and a nod but kept on counting. Some of
them webs have nearly a hundred radials and you'd be there all
day if you lost track.
The Teachers put up the For Sale at the end of the school year
but it wasn't until they'd gone that we learned they hadn't seen
the web, couldn't see it from their drive. But they had a nice
view of me taking a crap in the bushes while conducting an
invisible orchestra, or at least that's what they told the
neighbors. And that I was a Peeping Tom, creeping around at
night with a flashlight. Funny thing is, the neighbors never
doubted them for a minute, not since I clipped the top of the
eucalyptus doing a slow-roll over the house in a biplane a couple
of years before.
The next batch of neighbors were into horticulture in a big way,
growing America's favorite herb on the back of their newly
acquired property, or trying to. I had to show them how to break
down 'dobe soil with acid, helped them get the mulch just right.
They lasted about two years. Four crops. Number Three was
some primo shit. Or so I heard. Then came The Raid, with
helicopters and SWAT teams and insane German dogs and more Deputy
Sheriffs than a John Wayne movie.
So what's this got to do with Volkswagens? Well, it's like
this... We got some more new neighbors, haven't met them yet but
we sent them a Bread & Butter note like we always do, welcoming
them and inviting them over for cocktails some evening; their
option. Gave them our private phone number in case of trouble;
call the Sheriff, they don't hardly bother unless there's
shooting involved. But one of the talkative neighbors had
already been there, giving them the history of the place and of
their 'strange' neighbor with the airplane in the yard and all
the antennas on the roof, so we weren't expecting to hear from
them any time soon.
So I'm laying under this Karmann Ghia that has a bad CV. Got its
ass hiked up on jack stands and my legs are sticking out from
under. I've got the joints all cleaned and go to mark them and I
can't find my white stencil pencil, which is what I use for
marking. Sneak in the house and borrow a bottle of my daughter's
nail polish and use that. Neat little 'L' on the left axel,
little 'R' on the right, with perfectly painted little arrows and
alignment marks.
It's not easy, using nail polish laying on your back, holding the
bottle in one hand, brush in the other and trying to keep things
neat. Sure enough, I got a piece of black gunk on the brush and
can't get it off. Can't put it back in the bottle or my daughter
would kill me. Shuffle out and get all greasy in the process;
I'm not using the creeper. Sit down on a sawhorse and try to
clean the brush. Bottle's in my left hand, brush in my right,
big greasy thumb right there when I'm looking for something to
sorta skim the brush on. Used my thumb nail.
Nail Sticks 'Pearlescent.' Real pretty, sorta pearly white.
Makes a good marker for CV joints. And it went on my thumbnail
neat as anything, nice smooth coat.
I had to just about paint my whole thumbnail to get the black
booger off the brush but I finally got it. Looked up and there's
the new neighbor, jaw hanging down to here, eyes sticking out
like a couple of boiled eggs.
He didn't say nothing but you could tell what the damn fool was
thinking. So I fanned-out my fingers like a girl, blew gently on
the thumbnail and put on a second coat.
At supper my wife asks: "What's that all over your thumbnail?"
"Met the new neighbor today."
"Oh gawd," she sez real slow. "Not again."
-Bob