Hoarders

In the summer, we always eat outside, unless it's raining. One day last week, I was out on the deck drinking my morning coffee in my bathrobe, when I heard the unmistakable sound of a large truck backing up. From around the corner of the house, we saw a dumpster backing gingerly down the neighbor's driveway. I thought, maybe they're doing some construction, or a new roof.

This particular neighbor has lived in his house for a long long time, and he's kind of a odd ball. He blows his leaves and snow blows his driveway at night, in the dark - not because he has a day job, he doesn't, but because he's a night owl. He spends hours moving boxes and traffic cones from one side of his garage to the other. While I've been in his house, an ordinary enough house, I've never been in his basement, which he once described to me as Collyer-Brothers-like. I can believe it, based on what I've seen in his garage.

Two mornings after the dumpster drop, I heard the truck backing down the driveway again. The now full 20 yard container disappeared - and was replaced with an empty one. Days later, it seems full again. Periodically we hear something clang in, though mostly all I can see are cardboard boxes. No construction work is happening. But occasionally, I see the neighbor out there pulling things back out of the dumpster. And then his wife or one of his grown children comes out, and gently escorts him back in to the house.

To all appearances, the wife and children are staging a hoarder's intervention. I'm torn between sadness, pity and desperate curiosity as to what the hell is in those dumpsters.