LAST LAUGH

Curb Appeal

Won’t You (Not) Be My Neighbor

BY LAUREN ROTH ILLUSTRATION BY BRANDON LAND

I

t’s been a little more than a year since Mr. Roth and I moved into our current neighborhood. COVID was just shutting everything down when we moved in, and our interactions with the neighbors have been extremely limited. Most exchanges until this point have occurred from safe distances, usually involving apologies from both sides for not being more “neighborly” and promises that we’ll all get together in person eventually.

Now that our whole street has been vaccinated, nearly all of the neighbors have resumed being sociable. Like we are, they’re ready to mix and mingle. When I suggested that it’s time for a big block party, a few neighbors got nostalgic for the block parties they’d often had BC – “Before COVID” – all of which featured a pig roast.

A pig roast block party is next-level from the hotdog picnics I’d envisioned. It’s like the backdrop for a cholesterol drug commercial – the kind where all the picnickers have perfect teeth and outfits to match the drug’s product packaging, the weather is always sunny and 72 degrees, and everyone can eat the roasted pig while keeping their triglyceride levels in check.

Most importantly, a pig roast block party comes with a built-in guarantee of participation by ALL the (pork-eating) neighbors, including the weirdos. And I just can’t wait to meet the weirdos.

No matter where I’ve lived, weirdos have lived within a stone’s throw. I wish Zillow would include a “weirdo saturation” rating system for every listing on its website. Prospective buyers could evaluate the merits of one property over another, based on their own willingness to live near the garden variety weirdos.

In our last house, we lived next to a loud- talking – but otherwise lovely – family, who owned a restaurant that served chicken. In their backyard, they tended a nice vegetable garden ... when they weren’t screaming at the 30 chickens they were housing under their deck. Sure, one could argue that the neighbors had probably seen Martha Stewart or Chip and Joanna Gaines doing the same thing, but inside city limits, the chicken farm drove our pups crazy, to say nothing of running a-fowl of the law.

In another neighborhood years ago, I noticed a green garden hose stretched from one house to an unoccupied house across the street. The same neighbor who was “borrowing” water from the empty house had also hooked up an outdoor extension cord to a nearby electrical pole. It was brilliant, if unstealthy. And a little illegal.

Our current home sits in a beautiful, well-manicured neighborhood that really could be the neighborhood in a pharmaceutical commercial. Throughout the pandemic, I’ve been working from my home office, which gives me just the vantage point I need to channel my inner Gladys Kravitz: why do so many cars drive to the end of our street, a cul-de-sac? A few months ago, the police fueled my curiosity by sending 20 squad cars to a popular house at the bottom of the cul-de-sac – the one with an unusual volume of late-night callers.

Not one of my neighbors knows the entire back story, but every neighbor seems to have one or two snippets of intel on the residents at “that one house,” which, until a kitchen explosion at 5:30 a.m. tipped off the authorities, actually was the setting for a drug commercial – the homemade kind.

I’ll probably never get to meet the kook (or, in this case, the “cook”) at the end of the street. She’s in jail now, which is unfortunate because she’s about to miss out on a really great block party with a pig roast.

A LEGACY OF FINE FURNITURE FOR 62 YEARS

Keven Calonkey Carl Professional Member ASID NCIDQ Certified