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Categories - Copywriting - Shopping - Free Online Business Help - Telecommunications Services Articles: Home - Neighbors Continued (2) The house behind me used to be occupied by a woman named Mary who was renting the house from her brother. She was very friendly and we spent a lot of time talking, usually as she walked her dog. When she saw me working in the yard as she drove buy, she would stop her car in the street and yell at me, “Tearing things up again?” I would yell back something like, “Well. You want your dog to have a nice place to go to the bathroom, don’t you?” No matter how dirty and sweaty I got from working in the yard, it didn’t seem to bother her and she would stop and chat well within smelling distance as she walked by. One really hot day, when I was out working in the yard, another neighbor’s dog got out and was attacking hers as she was holding it in her arms. I got between her and the attacking dog and led her into my yard behind the fence. Mary wrapped her arms around my sweat-drenched shirt, buried her face into my sweaty cheek and said, “Thank you so much.” I went to New York for two weeks on business once and when I got home, she was gone. Her brother's wife had become jealous of her and caused him to make her move. I miss her. A Mormon family is now renting the home. The husband stopped by one day as I was cleaning the pond. He asked me how many fish I had and told me that he was planning to buy the home he's in and when he does, he is going to have a pond professionally put in by the guy across the street who installs ponds and he was thinking about putting a lot more twice as many fish in it. I said that his pond was going to be much better than mine and he smiled and walked off. He waves when we see each other, but we don't talk and I don't know his name. I have seen his wife, but we have never spoken. His kids come over to look at my pond now and then and I let them grab a peach or plumb. There is an old Japanese guy next to the school and across the street from the now empty lot named Ted. He used to be the mailman before he retired. He had a pond for a while also and, also for a while, we both had bullfrogs. Apparently one of them was male and one of them was female because they used to croak at each other all night at certain times of the year and one of them would eventually hop across the street to the other's pond. We would then take the visitor home. I noticed that Ted's chimney was cracked, where they usually crack at the roofline, from one of the earthquakes and offered to replace it for him only to be refused. I had to tell him that I would be doing it for the neighborhood because if there was a fire, it could easily spread, to get him to agree. He gave me his credit card and told me to put what I needed on it and he hired one of the immigrants to help tear the old one down and carry the brick and mix the mortar. Ted's wife died a few years ago and, after a while, he married a Philippine woman about 20 years younger. She decided that the front yard had to be spruced up and her brother, who is an official in the Philippine government, flew here for three weeks to do the work. Working from dawn to dusk, he used forms to build a low fence with lampposts out of concrete. He then crafted more concrete like modeling clay to form curves and create what looked like stones in the fence. Then, still using only concrete, he made places to sit and little areas for grass and flowers. It's like a Japanese tea garden and it was amazing to watch him shape the concrete with his trowel. I let him use Dad's truck to get his supplies and he occasionally borrowed tools. More of her brothers flew in to see what was happening as the project proceeded and they also used my truck to help. The gas tank was always topped off. Ted’s wife sometimes brings me food that she has prepared and, when I see Ted, who's health is failing, sitting outside, I always start a walk by crossing the street to speak to him. There is a woman diagonally across the street from Ted, next to the now empty lot, who rarely comes out of the house at the same time that I do, assuming that she comes out of the house. She did come out wearing a tool belt, carefully took many of the boards from the fence that surrounded the burned down house, and carried them off. I was working in the yard and she waved.
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