Life in the Big City

Last August marked 5 years that I've lived on East Confederate Avenue here in Atlanta. When we bought our house, the property next door had an old Ford Aerostar van parked wheel-well deep in the mud. The van was smack in the middle of my neighbor's back yard, neatly garnished with scrubby weeds, rusted construction equipment, moldy sheets of styrofoam insulation, and regularly serviced by a family of stray cats. But somehow the house looked like a work in progress.

Over the years, a pile of cinder blocks arrived, and later moved to the back of the yard. A construction dumpster was filled, emptied, and refilled, eventually taken who knows where. Piles of wood ebbed and flowed with the seasons. Scaffolding was erected over the house, siding stripped, windows removed and replaced a few feet to the right. Scaffolding was dismantled and neatly stacked on the side of the house. The roof was reshingled, mostly.

Diana was born on our block, and eventually married Johnny, all long before we arrived on the scene. The two of them lived next door when we moved in. They both have adult children who come and go, bringing their own children, sometimes depositing them with the happy couple for good. There is now a teenager, a tween and a toddler who call Johnny and Diana mom and dad. An old swingset arrived, and was placed in the middle of a circle of stones that holds chaos back like some druid ritual. Other wayward relatives have taken up residence. Graying men with the haggard look of drifters lean over their balcony for a smoke, leering over our property and ourselves as we relax on the back deck. Somewhere in the process, the neighbors picked up two ratty little terriers who bark in their front yard all day and into the night until someone calls the cops or tells them to shut up. Somehow there are now 5 ratty little terriers, each with its own grudge against passers-by as they move along on foot down our sidewalk. At least the van is gone.

Minor skirmishes sometimes occur. Johnny asks to cut down a perfectly good tree limb that leans over his property. I'd been told explicitly by our predecessors here to never let him cut a tree. That same towering oak is majestic on my side, and a mangled mess of half-sawed stumps with haphazard shoots on Johnny's. After some consideration, I told him he couldn't cut the tree, having looked up chapter and verse of city ordinance to ensure my position in the matter.

Johnny and Diana aren't bad people. They're just bad neighbors. From what I've gathered through neighborhood gossip and by living adjacent to their property, they had hard lives, made bad decisions, and became religious, charitable people who buttress a large complement of friends and relatives who have had their own share of hard life and bad ideas.

Yesterday, before an open house to sell our place and move back to DC, Katie and I went next door to ask Johnny to keep the dogs inside, at least from 2 to 4. He was very apologetic, sincere in his frustration about the situation, and determined to make it a little better. I played bad cop to Katie's good cop, and we felt like we made progress without letting things get as ugly as they could. During the conversation, Johnny mentioned that Diana thought we were in the CIA, or something maybe a little more sinister. That's probably because of the travel we do, the lack of kids, and the hometown we share with Jack Ryan and J. Edgar Hoover. Katie was quick on the draw with the vague reply, "we're in health care," as I stood silent, looking at my feet. The dogs were quiet when we needed them to be.

Tonight, from about 5 until a little after 6, Johnny was working a jackhammer into his foundation not a stone's throw from my porch. I sat inside patiently, foregoing the mild night air, preaching tolerance to myself, not allowing rage to take root. I sat inside, knowing it would stop soon, and it did.

As Johnny was shoveling debris into a pile before heading inside for dinner, I opened a beer and walked onto my porch, pretending to be on the phone. I spoke a mix of Hebrew and semitic-sounding gobbeldy-gook, throwing in a few extra glottal stops and khhhs for added effect. It was a confident, animated conversation with myself in no particular language, punctuated with the occasional "ok, man... yeah I know... say hi to Fatima and Ahmad, all right?" for authenticity. Before going inside, I finished the call with "salam habibi, yallah bye," and hung up, pressing the off button to make that cordless phone beep that makes it sound that much more real.

Tolerance is all well and good, but sometimes a little fun at someone's expense makes it all better.