Good Neighbors

A couple of weeks ago I tried to be a responsible house person and started taking down the Christmas lights. This seemed like a good idea at the time. But some of them are pinned up quite high, and I have my doubts about our ladder, and I ended up leaving a couple of strings of them just dangling there.

Meanwhile, all the neighbors are still turning theirs on every night. That's Travis Heights for you. To hell with the season: Christmas lights are sparkly!

Maybe if the rain lets up a little this weekend, I'll put the lights back up.

I love this neighborhood; this is one of the reasons why. I've lived plenty of places where people just let stuff go, and have on occasion been one of those people - though, for the record, I would never park in the yard, never! But this is different. It's not even a matter of marching to a different drummer. It's more that, while the drummer is joyfully encouraged to explore his or her own musical experience, no one would expect the marchers to adjust their personal ideals of tempo to match.

We had a neighbor a few years ago - I shall call him "Hank" (for 'twas his name), who hated us because we were such lousy, irresponsible house people. Cats everywhere, for starters. Hank kept his yard tidy, his lawn manicured, and his trees and bushes pruned. He had no pets. Oddly, he seemed to like my kids, but I always knew we were not good enough for him. God knows I used to try. I studied the Reader's Digest New Complete Do-It-Yourself Manual, but to no avail. Someone gave us a second copy as a gift, and as a gesture of goodwill, I gave it to Hank, who pretended to be grateful. Once, a limb from one of our trees (the entire neighborhood was a hackberry forest) came down and felled the fence between our backyards. It sagged for a week before I hauled the fencepost up and lashed it to the tree trunk. Hank informed me that the angle at which I'd done this would pull down all the rest of the fenceposts; so I went out and bought some quick-set cement, dug out the fencepost, and set it in place. Hank grudgingly admitted that this worked, but it took me much too long to get around to. I tried edging the front yard, but couldn't find the sidewalk, so left big, uneven ripples in the edges of the lawn, overlapping the concrete. Hank watched, waves of 60-something-responsible-house-person disapproval radiating from him. Occasionally he'd trap one of my cats and I'd have to go bail it out from the pound. It got to where I just avoided going outside at all, but this only made things worse.

But I feel like I belong in Travis Heights: relaxed; offbeat; a little messy; full of congenial, well-fed dogs and cats; and above all else, happy.

Because in Travis Heights, it's always Christmas!

Everybody's Got a Story

I have this neighbor - he lives on my street, just on the other side of the cross-street three houses down from me. I see him most mornings when I'm on the way to work. He's a small, wiry guy who runs with his dog.

He doesn't jog. He runs. Like hell. He runs, the dog in full turbo-blast mode ahead of him, as if the dog were dragging him along and it's all he can do to keep up. Yesterday he appeared completely unprepared for the exercise, as he was wearing sandals instead of running shoes. He waves when we pass each other, but doesn't speak - I should imagine he's a bit out of breath.

It can't be fun. Why does he do it?

Perhaps his girlfriend is a high-powered lawyer who puts in 80-hour workweeks and doesn't have time to walk her dog. When they started dating, he was a bit intimidated; so to impress her, he told her he loved animals (he actually can't stand them) and volunteered to walk her dog for her. It worked like a charm and he's now moved in, but at what a terrible cost! He must go out twice a day and run breathlessly for miles, tethered to that miserable dog, which appears to be some kind of cheetah mix. He waves to the people he passes just because he can't speak; but what he's really trying to say is "Help me... please... for the love of God, help!"

When he and his girlfriend met he weighed about 300 pounds.

This story can't end well, because, you know, he's already quite skinny. He's only going to get thinner. He has to eat vast quantities of calorie-rich food just to maintain as much weight as he does, but eventually the battle will be lost and he'll dwindle away altogether. Poor guy!

And his girlfriend, having wasted away the life of yet another victim, will sing her siren song over at the nearby state agency and pick out a new one. Oh no! Run away!

Of course I suppose there's an outside possibility that's not really his story. But I've never talked to him, so it'll have to do for now.