Neighbors

My latest column from the Stillwater Gazette. More non-political crap. Sigh...

I don’t have good luck with neighbors.

It began in a trailer park in Nebraska, stereotypically a Petri dish for human despair. The neighborhood was a prototype of a Fox Network “Cops” theme park, complete with costumed characters Mr. Mullet, Crackhead Suzie, and Billy the eerily docile, web-toed 14-year old third-grader. If Al Qaeda had targeted this trailer park rather than the Twin Towers, the War on Terror would have amounted to a shrug. Loud music; drunken brawls; starving, inbred animals wandering the streets: the place had it all, if by “all” you mean a loophole in God’s suicide prohibitions. When a neighbor’s station wagon crashed into my living room one evening, I took that as a sign it was time to move on before a tornado mercifully leveled the place.

After moving to Minnesota my luck changed. I moved into a beautiful apartment building along the Mississippi River and was surrounded by neighbors the likes of which I’d never seen before. They were employed. They had children one at a time, not in litters. People recognized me as a neighbor, not as a witness, delivering cookies rather than subpoenas. So it was somewhat disheartening when six months later two neighbors simultaneously took up the organ.

Next door, a young professional on the fast-track at 3M played majestic hymns at full volume which would have been moving had it occurred in a cathedral rather than one thin wall away from my bedroom. Conversely, the man across the hall was more of a blue-collar guy, so he stuck to the standards: polkas, waltzes, and the like. A Lutheran church service on one side, Lawrence Welk on the other: suddenly I found myself sandwiched between “Dueling Wurlitzers,” the Norwegian version of “Deliverance,” if you will.

Fast-forward several years to a duplex in South Minneapolis. Everything was peaches and cream until the landlord reported that four college students were moving in downstairs. Of course, the phrase “college students” brings to mind visions of Animal House; drinking, debauchery, and the washer and dryer perpetually stuffed with beer-stained togas. To my relief, however, my landlord further explained that they were medical students. Between residency, class, and studying I figured they’d barely be home enough to snatch a couple hours of sleep here and there, let alone have an opportunity to party.

To my dismay, not only did they have time and wherewithal for non-stop revelry, they apparently received a government grant. Obviously they were an integral part of a University of Minnesota cirrhosis research project. The driveway became a gauntlet of bare-chested, inebriated, posturing fraternity boys, their baseball caps positioned at strategic angles as dictated by FredDurst.com, the lawn strewn with enough Blatz cans to cash in for a semester’s worth of tuition. After countless nightmares of the reprobates presenting me with a group prostate exam on my 40th birthday, I succumbed to the lure of the suburbs and moved to Woodbury.

Imagine my delight when I discovered that the man in the adjoining town home was amazingly quiet. It turned out this was in order to maintain a low profile, since he hadn’t paid rent for months. Overnight he discovered tribal music, and staccato beats and chanting began emanating from his town home at all hours. This white, middle-aged man suddenly turned his back on his Methodist roots and discovered voodoo. I pictured the worst: necklaces fashioned from the skulls of neighborhood children; blood guzzled from the necks of chickens sacrificed to some heathen goddess; worse, he might be a registered Democrat. He was asked to leave, and as a final middle-finger to management, painted all his walls dark brown before moving out under cover of night. Peering through closed blinds, witnessing him and his friends loading the moving van, I turned my back on both evolution and Intelligent Design, not wishing to insult either God or apes.

The carnage has been cleaned up and new neighbors have moved in. They seem to be the very epitome of responsibility and courtesy; two young women, gainfully employed, quiet as church mice. That doesn’t fool me, however. It’s only a matter of time before they recognize a void in their lives that can only be filled with gangsta’ rap or midnight skeet-shooting fueled by cheap beer. You see, insanity is a virus and I’m a carrier, infecting entire neighborhoods before moving on in search of peace and quiet which will forever elude me. On the plus side, my broker tells me the toga and Blatz stock he’s invested in on my behalf are going through the roof.