Appreciating good neighbors

[rwsaunders]

We have lived in this home for the past 22 years and as we don't live in a development, we have limited neighbor interaction, as the lots are spread out on our road, ranging anywhere from 2-10 acres and we border a private road in the rear. We do share a driveway entrance with two gents, who have been our neighbors the entire time and we all hit it off from the day that we started construction on our home. We watch their cats, they keep an eye on our home when we are away and we are always trading gardening stories and sharing produce. I normally snowblow their driveway when I do ours, as they are both getting up there in age and with COVID, they have been hunkered down. My efforts are always rewarded with a thank you note, sometimes a fresh pie and sometimes a bottle of red. Not needed of course, but they are gentlemen to the core.

Today was a great example of neighbor helping neighbor as we received another 5" of snow, which means driveway clearing time. This morning I thought, I'll get out the snowblower once again, but I will wait until after a few ZOOM calls and after everyone is awake, as I'm not driving anywhere today. But no, a few minutes ago, I saw a white plume of snow coming from my driveway as Ron is out there in his Carhartts and showing the Gravely who's boss. My turn with the bottle of red I guess.

[j44ke]

I've had bad ones and I've had good ones. I definitely prefer the latter and try to be one myself. Generosity is best practice.

[monadnocky]

I've had bad ones and I've had good ones. I definitely prefer the latter and try to be one myself. Generosity is best practice.

Can absolutely make the difference between living in heaven versus living in hell.

[sk_tle]

My neighbour is exposing her lovely naked body almost every night when going out of the shower, so I would put this as a +. Her boyfriend is a gamer that barely go out of the living room where he plays playstation all day and I never had the occasion to talk to him as he barely goes out. I would thus say our relations is good.

[Mabouya]

Thomas, I think she's trying to tell you something.

[ColonelJLloyd]

I grew up in a very rural area, but I knew and interacted in some capacity with virtually all of my "neighbors" for miles in every direction. I've lived within a few blocks of where I do now for nearly 20 years and it is a very different experience (my house is on a 50x100 lot and we're a short walk away from any manner of restaurants, groceries, ice cream, the best baguette in the city, etc). My wife and I now have two kids and have been in this 1250 sq ft bungalow for more than 13 years. We have been "looking" for another house for half of that time and there are many reasons we have not left this house. A big reason is that we love this neighborhood and to substantially increase our square footage we could barely afford to stay close by despite both of us being "professionals". But if we really get down to it and I'm being honest, the reason we have not moved from this house is because I don't want to leave my nextdoor neighbor. I can't explain it well, but it's just not something I want to do. The relationship I've built with my buddy Herman, who will turn 104 next month and still lives by himself, is an intangible I can't quite figure out myself.

This last year has been hard on everyone for all the reasons, but not spending as much time with my neighbor as I would have and he and I would've liked has weighed on me.

Cheers to good neighbors. How lucky can one man get, indeed.

Untitled by ColonelJLloyd, on Flickr

[johnmdesigner]

Oh he’s a keeper.
What a sweetheart!

[bigbill]

I bought a house east of town. On one side is a retired Air Force guy in his upper 70s and a widower. His daughter lives on the other side of him and she is an awful person. She was the listing agent and it got bad enough that I complained to the state about her behavior. Her dad is nice. On the other side is a disabled guy with pretty severe MS so he's in a wheelchair or scooter. On Sunday, Terri was unloading her truck and heard "neighbor, neighbor" from next door. He was getting out of the car into his scooter when he had a muscle spasm and fell on the garage floor. He didn't have his phone and had been there for about an hour. Luckily it was 70 degrees. We couldn't move him so he asked us to call the Fire Department. They came right over and put him in his scooter. Apparently, it's not an uncommon occurrence. If his garage is open, I always stop to look.

[Too Tall]

Similar here. We love our neighbors, all of them even the clueless ones but especially those who we engage nearly everyday. Most of all our neighbors next door who moved in about 15 years ago. Prior to them moving in we had Jxxxn, she was a mean old lady who would leave me sticky notes with thing she needed done. I'd take care of her list until the next time, no thank you just cold stares. That's what you do for old folks right? LOL I finally located one of her son's and gave him he!! so he started taking better care of her. After she moved out we got this amazing family with one infant and a 2 year old (there are 5 now). As the kids grew older we all became quite bonded. Coming home to screams of kids greeting us is priceless. I make cookies and the odd pizza, we feed their chickens, they watch the house when we are traveling. It is as good as it gets which has effectively put a quash on looking for a new home "away" from DC mayhem.

When sweet Sully the wonder Poodle passed a few weeks ago you would think the Pope had died. Neighbors with tears, fruit boxes, cards and words. Honestly, how wonderful are people? VERY.

Humanity, it is what separates us from dirt.

[Tom]

Today is rubbish day which means that if I don't run out there the minute I hear the trucks and the cans banging my neighbor Doug will beat me to it and bring the cans up to the garage when he does his and the lady's that lives across the street from us. The other night I was sitting in my front room watching it snow thinking I'd shovel in the morning when it was done, Doug after he finished snowblowing his driveway wheeled around and started mine. I jumped up and went out, he had remembered when we had the big snow I mentioned the drive on my blower was balky. I said, no, I had fixed it just the takeup needed tightening. He said Oh, yeah, I forgot you told me. I am pretty sure I never told him about fixing it... but I know he'd have done the driveway anyway, he's like that.

He mentioned some plans for his back yard and very apologetically said he might be taking down a couple of the leaning pines... contrasting with the new young couple on the other side that immediately clear cut the yard leaving nothing but stumps. The only trees left are the ones along our property line that the young fellow gleefully told me "Are on the list!"

We're putting up a fence this spring.

[Mark Walberg]

When I grew up, just a bit northwest of Pittsburgh, everyone knew everyone in our neighborhood.
It was, indeed, a community.
Now, just a bit northwest of Dallas, everyone has tall fences around their little square of yard, and almost no one talks to their neighbors.
I been able to know a few in spite of this.
I think that this neighborhood isolation is due not only to the fences, but also to the car culture that we live in.
Glad to see there are still real neighborhoods in the burgh

[davids]

This thread is awesome.

My own situation is, unfortunately, more complex. As we approached the purchase of our house five years ago, my wife & I discovered a problem with the deed and a supposed easement our neighbors had, that allowed them to park on our property. Our effort to resolve the problem took our relations from friendly to full-on hostile. It also took us to court, where (after three years) the judge upheld our position and forced our neighbors off our property.

This is a tight urban neighborhood and our home is part of a small association sharing responsibility for landscaping and snow removal. Not surprisingly, some of our other neighbors have taken a side in the disagreement. Or at least, have an opinion of me & my wife that they absorbed from the first neighbors. So we have sometimes found ourselves targets of suspicion (like when someone got an anonymous note about their barking dog...) or low-level hostility. I thought I was just paranoid until I said, "Good morning!" to one of them and she told me she hated me for what I'd done to her friend. That sucked.

But. Other neighbors are steadily warming up to us. I was really happy when another neighbor stopped me on the street early last month to ask about the construction crew working in our house and talk about the terrifying national politics. So my door remains open and our lights are on. I'm hoping to refer my GC to this guy when he's ready to remodel his kitchen. Life is long and I hear the moral arc of the universe bends toward kindness.

[bigbill]

HOA/POAs - My neighborhood has a Property Owners Association. In September, the covenants are up for renewal and the board of directors is pushing hard for votes. I'm new to the neighborhood but I've got a double lot, so I have two votes. I questioned the BOD on why they don't enforce any covenants, why people have RVs in their front yard, why they've build chain link fences, etc. I've been stirring up some shit trying to get them to commit to action. It is a golf course community, I live three blocks from a fairway, but I don't golf. The golf course and clubhouse were built a few decades ago and are the property of the POA, but the course, restaurant, and bar are run by private businesses, which is a violation of the covenants which don't allow profits from amenities. I don't really care that much, but I'd like my property value to keep going up.

I live in the desert, my yard is gravel, folks can feel free to walk on my lawn.

[ElvisMerckx]

When sweet Sully the wonder Poodle passed a few weeks ago...

Oh no, Josh, so sorry to hear. Feeling heartsick now. Sully was such a great dog.

[Too Tall]

Oh no, Josh, so sorry to hear. Feeling heartsick now. Sully was such a great dog.

The best. Appreciate you.

[VertigoCycles]

We had a neighbor across the street who was in his house long before we bought ours. Sadly, he passed last year from a heart attack but there's not a day that goes by that I don't look out our front window and think of Randy. When we first moved in, we were wary of him...for months, he was just digging a hole, shirtless, popping up like a prairie dog from time to time and smacking his chest while yelling "ha!". My wife took a pan of cinnamon buns over to him on Christmas morning that first year we lived here and from then on, we were friends. I can't claim to fully understand why, but he was proud of what I do for a living and genuinely excited about it. Any time I had a customer over to chat design or to check out the shop, he'd come right over, always shirtless, to tell the customer what a good decision they made. He wasn't shy about asking for sugar, or for me to give him some coffee, and he brought us a few fresh eggs several times a week for years. For at least ten years, he called me "SEEN", I think because he saw my name in an article in a local magazine. He had a pittie named Willard who is every bit as goofy and kind as Randy was and thankfully he lives just down the street now with some other neighbors. Randy has a much rougher life than anyone I've known and he was the most real person I've ever met. Completely unencumbered by ego, always working hard as hell, always offering help and asking for it when he needed some. I met one of his brothers when he came to clean out the house. We shared some stories, had some laughs and tears and I learned a bit more about how Randy came to be how he was. Rough life. I really miss that guy.

[Mark Walberg]

.....Life is long ....

Gosh, I hope so.

[Mark Walberg]

I grew up in a very rural area, but I knew and interacted in some capacity with virtually all of my "neighbors" for miles in every direction. I've lived within a few blocks of where I do now for nearly 20 years and it is a very different experience (my house is on a 50x100 lot and we're a short walk away from any manner of restaurants, groceries, ice cream, the best baguette in the city, etc). My wife and I now have two kids and have been in this 1250 sq ft bungalow for more than 13 years. We have been "looking" for another house for half of that time and there are many reasons we have not left this house. A big reason is that we love this neighborhood and to substantially increase our square footage we could barely afford to stay close by despite both of us being "professionals". But if we really get down to it and I'm being honest, the reason we have not moved from this house is because I don't want to leave my nextdoor neighbor. I can't explain it well, but it's just not something I want to do. The relationship I've built with my buddy Herman, who will turn 104 next month and still lives by himself, is an intangible I can't quite figure out myself.

This last year has been hard on everyone for all the reasons, but not spending as much time with my neighbor as I would have and he and I would've liked has weighed on me.

Cheers to good neighbors. How lucky can one man get, indeed.

Untitled by ColonelJLloyd, on Flickr

I've looked at this page a couple times.
I've concluded that I'd enjoy this visit with your neighbor.