Block Party

The first house that I remember living in was one of four nearly identical little houses in a row. They were clearly built from the same plans, in about 1920, but each one was a little different. One had square porch columns, one had round ones. Ours was shingled, next door was stucco. One of the four houses was completely overgrown and rather neglected, and was owned and occupied by a pair of unwed brothers. We never saw them.

We moved out of that house, but only around the block. So the neighbors were all the same, the friends were still right there, the communal events continued. But we still never saw either of those brothers.

Eventually one of two died. The surviving brother started showing up at the neighborhood block party, the Labor Day party that everyone went to, including me, long after I'd graduated from college and moved into Manhattan. And because it was a communal pot-luck kind of block party, he always brought something. Amidst the seas of homemade salads and desserts and soups and potato pie, there'd be a package of Pecan Sandies or Fig Newtons. "Oh, the brother brought that."

Finally, the Labor Day party came to an end. The host got ALS, and they moved to an apartment and sold the house. But there was one last Labor Day, and one last block party, a big one, overflowing the backyard one last time. And the brother, for that last party, brought a pack of gum.

It was an utterly inept and completely charming thing to have done.

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You know how one thing leads to another? Jen recently wrote about her daughter's birthday party, and how they encroached on their neighbor's lawn for the bouncy house. Her description of her neighbor forlorning cutting his lawn with scissors and lending them a solitary chair inspired this post in a roundabout way; I'd forgotten about the gum-bearing brother until I read that, and of course, today's Labor Day.

If you have eccentric neighbors, I hope they're the good kind of eccentric.