One recent Friday morning, I was in the home office when I heard a fire truck stop, as it turned out, right in front of our house. I looked out to see an EMT walking toward our walkway, then veered next door.
I’m conflicted about the proper “it’s none of my business”/curiosity and voyeurism ratio. I mean it’s RIGHT next door. Eventually I went out to the curb to bring back the garbage can that had been emptied overnight, and I see one of the young women helped down the stairs, aided onto a stretcher, and taken to the hospital in an ambulance.
It’s odd, but I have NO idea who lives in that building presently. Since one family moved out about seven years ago, with the structure sold to a landlord who does not live there, a string of college students have been filtering in and out. Only a handful did I ever meet. Some were great, more than a few I’ve had to visit to turn down their music, especially when their windows are open; the distance from the buildings is only a few meters.
The current crop of neighbors appear to be primarily students from east Asia. I had very limited interaction with them, good or ill. One time, some of the young women were picking up some of the dozens of cigarette butts strewn in the front of the building. I walked by, said, “good job!”, and gave them a thumbs up. They looked at me blankly as though they did not comprehend English.
Day after the EMTs had shown up, there was a young lady sitting on the steps. I noted that I had seen the ambulance in front of the house carting someone off. She acknowledged that she was the patient. I asked what was the issue, and she said it was her heart, “but I’m OK now.”
She was maybe 22. And smoking a cigarette, as most of her housemates do.
Money
The next Friday, it was about 9:30 in the evening when someone knocked on our door.
We were expecting no one. So we checked on the cats – the female looks like she wants to go outside, but the usually aggressive male cat didn’t bother to come downstairs from his/our comfy bed.
The guy, who I had never seen, needed bus fare home. I said, “OK,” then closed the door most of the way, because of said felines. I had a $1 and a $20. I opened the door, gave him the smaller bill and said, “That’s all I have.”
Which was true, in a sense. That’s all I had for a complete stranger showing up on my porch. I’ll give him points for chutzpah, which he’ll need to get another 50 cents for the ride home, assuming he’s telling the truth.
Cat
My garbage gets picked up in my neighborhood. Thursday night. One Friday morning in mid-May, I’m about to bring in the receptacle, but it’s heavier than it should be.
Sometime between when the trash removal folks emptied the can, at 4 or 5 a.m., and 8 a.m., someone placed a dead cat in the bottom. They covered it with a couple plastic bags, thank goodness, but I could see the white paws at the end of gray legs sticking out. Suffice it to say, as an owner of two felines, this was very unsettling, and a lousy way to start the day.
I call the non-emergency police number in Albany (438-4000) and explain what happened. I’m transferred to a recording at animal control, where I apprise them of the situation, which I assume they will deal with before The Daughter gets home from school. But they don’t, and as they’re closed on the weekend, the Wife and I discreetly dispose of the feline.
Also, twice in the previous four or five weeks to that incident, someone had left a bag of garbage on our curb. They were closed, and heavy. It has me wondering 1) if it’s the same person or people and 2) what were in the those bags. But we haven’t experienced this recently, so maybe it’s someone who has since moved away.
I barely know my neighbors, which is kind of sad. One is a rental house that changes regularly, the other is someone who’s never home it appears. Growing up we knew all the neighbors and even had agreements with them of whose house my brother and I were to go to after school if my mom wasn’t home.
My parents know their current neighbors WELL. Which is a very good thing. I have the phone numbers of both the immediate neighbors and had to use them at one time when my parents were not home for hours on end and my brother called me, worried because he could not reach them – turns out one of them had to go to the ER and the neighbors across the street knew some of the detail.
Also one of the neighbors is quite strong and has helped my mom lift or move stuff when she needs it.
The cat and the stranger at my door would freak me out.
I’m getting to know my neighbors. I’m pretty good friends already with my immediate neighbors to the north and the couple a few doors down whose daughter was friends with my foster daughter. I’m trying to get there with my other neighbors. I may host an open party towards the end of the summer when the house is closer to being done (decorated, painted, etc.)
Next door to me: vacant. Other side: parking lot for apartment complex around the corner.
That leaves the folks across the street, who are Good Neighbors in every sense of the word: they’ve come to my assistance when I’ve stumbled, and they watch the house when I can’t.