Neighbors

[Jersey Girl]

Still in and out of here. Still reading. Still thinking of the implications. Still loving this.

In other news, I've decided that I don't care about the photo showing here that was originally in my OP. I'm too old for this cloak and dagger stuff and I have no connections there any more anyway. Which kind of makes me sad when I think about it. Here it is:

This is the block I described in the OP. That's the beach I played on as a child.



I'll show you a closer up view of where my house was, too. Our boat was docked right across the street. Lord only knows how much that would cost today.



Go right to left...that HUMONGOUS blue thing is where my house used to stand. My real house was tiny! Almost everyone of those houses has been raised up due to flooding. Picture them sitting on the ground...beach cottages or bungalows as they were called back then. That is not where I was born but that is where I come from. That is where I lived a plain life and knew everyone around me.

I still live a plain life in a way but I hardly know anyone around me.

I've been thinking about the replies and further thoughts on my part. I'll try to formulate them into a post that makes some kind of sense.

Anecdote: When I went back to my home town after a 10 year absence with my kids on a trip back in summer, I parked across the street from my actual house to watch a little blonde girl walking down the street, up my old sidewalk and into my old house.

I was a blonde girl, too. So strange, heartwarming and I dunno...bittersweet and poignant to see that happen!

[Jersey Girl]

I've held back replying here to the posts because I didn't want to lose my own train of thought. It's been running all day long on this. I'll do this one first though.

Jersey Girl, you made this observation,
" I have not been in all of the houses on this block. I do not know everyone's name."

I was a bit taken aback. I have never in my seventy plus years lived in any situation even vaguely close to that. I may know a person or family on the block. Not always. As a child I grew up in somewhat older areas with backyards. Kids in the neighbor hood played with each other. My parents knew people through church or employment. The people in the neighborhood were usually neither.

I have wondered at times what would encourage more neighborly friendships but I do not know the answer.

huck that is all I knew in childhood! It was a small beach town. I didn't know everyone but I knew everyone on my block and knew people all over the town. Also in the various local churches and of course, my own. We roamed everywhere and walked everywhere depending on the school bus routes. I remember so much of it. I knew so many kinds of people. When I say that I grew up in a melting pot, I don't just mean a state on the East Coast. It was upfront and personal for me. I think truly, that if you knew me in real life you'd say...that's why you are who you are, Jersey. That explains why you do what you do.

But memories weren't the point of the OP. Something has been welling up inside of me and it's not really about childhood, though that is my reference point. Something has been bothering me and it's hard to contain my thoughts, to keep them on one track before they shoot off on another. The whole thing (what triggered all of this) begins by reading the many complaints on my NextDoor app. People regularly write to complain about a place of business, a restaurant when they weren't satisfied with the service, or a neighbor they basically hate.

Every time I read one of those complaints I think....did you try talking to them? Those times that I actually ASK they always say they have not talked to the manager or the neighbor in an attempt to solve the problem.

This leads me to believe that people are afraid to talk to each other these days. That people don't know how to work things out with an actual person. They take it to the faceless and nameless social media outlet they're a part of. They seem to go zero to pissed off with no other consideration in between except the fact that they are pissed off.

Why? That's probably the WHY that drove the OP.

And when I zoom out the sociological lens, I think this is a national problem that describes interaction and behaviors on a national scale.

I'm crazy in my head, I know. I don't need anyone to say that. This is what happens when a staunch introvert goes into her head and camps out there. honor actually touched on part of what I'm thinking about in his post here. I'll get back to that.

[canpakes]

My father was in the army and we moved a lot, between army bases in which everyone else was also transitory anyway. So I have no hometown.

This was the same for our own family, as we were military brats. There’s no place we lived during our pre-adult years that I could today consider ‘home’.

The grandparents’ house became that, for all intents and purposes. Our family made many trips back to see them no matter where we ended up being stationed, and I knew some of the kids on their street better than wherever I actually lived at any moment. It was a pretty tight-knit community with a lot of history and I still feel more strongly drawn to that town more than any place we had been stationed.

[Jersey Girl]

In the Ken Burns documentary about Frank Lloyd Wright, the the sociological ramifications of moving the focus of family activity from the front porch to the back yard was a major point. It's the difference between a ranch house and a row house. In a row house neighborhood, the children play in the street while the parents kibbutz on the front porches. Mothers give implied consent for other mothers to correct their child's behavior. The ranch house moves everything to the back yard.

I have got to find that documentary! Yes! I well remember the front steps (the stoop as it was called) and porches you speak of. I was well familiar with that situation when I had occasion to visit relatives in Newark so I know exactly what you are talking about and also the attitudes you describe.

Besides the Ken Burns film, one of my Top 10 movies of all time is Avalon, directed by Barry Levinson of Diner fame. It follows the fortunes of brothers who move to America, and how prosperity, mobility and freedom gave them what they wanted but not what they needed. HIGHLY recommend Avalon.

I have a hunch that what they needed had something to do with themes in my OP. I am going to find that movie and watch it, too. Thank you for giving me resources that will likely help me understand the underlying issues, give some structure to my thoughts, and resonate with my purposes here!

[msnobody]

I grew up knowing all the neighbors, although there weren’t a lot of kids my age. Because my mother moved to Greenwood when she was 4 years old and I too was raised there, and the history of the community, I haven’t been able to bring myself to sell mine and my mother’s childhood home or property. It was a subsistence homestead community from The New Deal back in the 30’s. I’ve got original documents from when the community was started.

http://www.bplonline.org/resources/exhi ... omesteads/

My children grew up where we gathered across three families’ front yards most evenings with the kids playing and parents talking and playing with the kids. There were like 25 children living between the two stop signs on our street at the time.

[Jersey Girl]

This post is so packed full I doubt that I can do justice in responding to it. Thank you so much for this!

I liked this post a lot, especially the part about the neighbor who made the rugs.

They were so beautiful and what one would describe today as high end. Sold them to the furniture stores if memory serves. I often wonder if seeing his craft is responsible for my love of woven textiles. Who gets to see such things hand made close and up front these days? His garage was his shop. It was an old garage with old wooden doors that you had to open by hand from the middle. Their house was filled with the aroma of home cooked Turkish food. It smelled so good!

In these rural communities, everybody has their thing. When my parents were in decline, I did the same and pulled the Google Earth image of the house I grew up in and thought about those days. I grew up in California, in one of the most rural and green parts, where I lived in a small house on a half acre plot with a septic tank. We were poor, but I wouldn't say dirt poor. it felt like that though. Our neighbors on either side had full acre plots. We were kind of misfits. Everyone on that long road was right-wing, as were we, but my dad was an artist, whereas all the neighbors were multi-generational ranchers or tradesmen. We raised every crop imaginable, while the neighbors raised horses and hogs. On the other side of one neighbor were two more half-acre plots with the mechanically inclined bread-winners. They had all the fun stuff, go-karts and minibikes and lots of room for big tool shops.

I love the thought of this description! Do you mind saying what type of artist your Dad was? Do you share his gift for creativity or making things with your own hands? You don't have to answer of course. Did you raise the food to feed yourselves or to sell in a market place? My whole family were Democrats.

I think there were some differences in right-wing culture back then. Integrity meant something back then, even among the roughest of the neighbors. There was a kid on the one side whose family was tough as nails, I wouldn't say he was a friend or an enemy, he was just too tough for me and so I was scared of him. One day he was throwing rocks at me "for fun" and took a nick out of my scalp, I told on him, my mom called his, and soon the neighbor lady had her son to our house apologizing through tears. That was unnerving, I'm sure she'd beat him good for that one. Well, that's not the "integrity" I'm talking about, but generally, mom owning the situation like that. Today, what would happen is mom would deny it and say her son is innocent and it was my brother and I who needed to be dealt with. The girls in that neighborhood were also tough. Another time, a Mormon friend of ours from another part of town was at our house playing and the girls from around the corner showed up on their horses; they're like 9, not teens. My friend was this athletic, natural leader type, and he mouthed off to one of the girls and she lashed him in the face with her horse whip.

I was taught to own up to things I did as well. I never really got in trouble, but I knew if I did there would be a consequence so I towed the line. As I said, my family were Democrats so I don't know if responsibility taking is a political trait or not. The one and only time I remember getting in trouble was when I was in my backyard and the dogs were barking like crazy and I said, "Shut up, you bastards". And the reason I remember that is because that was the only spanking I can recall getting in my entire life. From my father (Jersey truck driver, teamster type) who is obviously the source of the word that I used.

You are right about what would happen today. People seem to irrationally shift blame at the first sign of trouble. I don't know why we have come to that point as a society. Oh and the tough girls and the horse whipping! The girls in my elementary school used to beat up on each other!

But other things never change. The kid who threw the rocks had a bunch of guns and got me interested, and I eventually got a bb gun. He had a .410, pellet gun, and a 30-30 and we were eight or nine. They raised hogs, and one day it was time to slaughter the hog. Not sure what I was thinking, as I was always unnerved by the suffering of any animal, but I was interested in the guns. "Grandpa" was there to do the job with his .44 magnum. We had lots of cap guns and I knew what a .44 magnum was and was excited to see it in action. So I went over. I wouldn't say the adults over their were friendly to me, I was really intimidated, but I guess I was a neighbor so had a right to be there. I saw grandad prancing with his .44 in a belt holster. When the time came, I squeezed into the crowd but had a restricted view. What I remember most is the smell and the giant flies. Granddad pulled his gun and held it right to the face of the hog with both hands and pulled the trigger. Blood splattered and the hog screamed and jumped back and I also jumped back. An argument unfolded as Granddad had only grazed the hog. I stayed until the end, but didn't watch the rest.

I never saw such a thing in my entire life! I know my father had a shot gun when we lived on the farm where we lived in the Catskills where I was born. I never saw the death of any animal like that. I think you are saying that the kid who threw the rock at you and you...stayed friends. No grudges held, right? I had cap guns too. I've written on this board how I liked taking a hammer to them on the back entry which was cinder blocks...smashing the hell out of them just to set them off. I loved the smell of those!

So yeah, you still have these right-wing men who can't do anything useful with all their guns. Grandparents protecting kids in schools? Not when they can't even put down a hog point blank with a .44 magnum.

That should have been an easy kill I guess. I think old guys who regularly carry are compensating. I don't really want to discuss it.

[Jersey Girl]

MeDot you are in trouble! I just watched the trailer for the Avalon film. I'm having it delivered on Monday for a rather ugly price from Amazon. I think I'm going to love it and probably cry through it.

Thank you!!!

[MeDotOrg]

MeDot you are in trouble! I just watched the trailer for the Avalon film. I'm having it delivered on Monday for a rather ugly price from Amazon. I think I'm going to love it and probably cry through it.

Thank you!!!

Hope you love it as much as I did. Interesting thing about the script: It poured out of Levinson in a matter of days. He didn't have to work or struggle with writer's block. The story just flowed out of him.

[Gunnar]

Thank you for starting this thread, Jersey Girl! Because of it, I appreciate and admire both you and those who responded to it more than ever. I understand more than before how you became the deeply thoughtful and compassionate person I have so much come to admire! You not only revealed some of the best of what you are and have become but prompted some of the other regulars here whom I most admire to do the same. Your ability to do that is a profound gift!

[Gadianton]

I definitely have the least amount of artistic talent in my family.

That neighbor and I weren't really friends, I don't remember which incident came first but I didn't seek out interacting with him. This kid was tough as nails, he was riding bucking broncos before I could ride a bike. Somehow anytime we played, I always ended up getting the wind knocked out of me or something, so wasn't worth it. He wasn't mean, but probably had some kind of hyperactivity and stuff like that wasn't diagnosed or dealt with correctly back then. sad because I learned years later that he ended up in and out of jail down the road, after we'd moved away. The kid on the other side of their plot was a great friend; could have been a lifelong friend. That kid's mother kept in contact with my mom and let her know what was going on in the neighborhood until the end, even when my mom had quit writing back a couple decades prior (she always felt bad about that). They were Baptists, and my parents and they were in a conversion war. I remember going to one of their church breakfasts. Only time I can ever recall anyone trying to proselyte us harder than my dad was trying to convert them. I remember it was their coffee maker that gave me a complex about drinking coffee. My parents would regularly mention the coffee drinking, like it was a big deal, and that coffee maker, just something about it didn't sit right with me.

Compared to the pictures you have of your old neighborhood, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of improvements in my hometown. Google earth shows that a detached garage was built in the center of the property, where there used to be a huge section of grass I had to mow. the supreme redneck upgrade. lol. I'd love to move back there, I could make great use of that garage now. Well, like all things California, even with everything stagnate, real estate shot through the roof. Had my parents moved a few years later, they could have 40x'd their investment instead of 2x'd.