The Blog Across the Street

Neighbors are a curious species in the city. In many ways, I felt much closer to my neighbors when I lived in the "country" even if their houses weren't up against mine. I left the said country because I got tired of watching trees get leveled to make room for enormous houses or worse, resorts and equally as tired of watching farmers, who could only sell their land in 10 acre plots, continously vote conservative Repubican because they wanted the right to develop their cow-pooped pastures in small subdivisions.

My first night in the city was here at this house. It was the Fourth of July and I remember staring out the bedroom window gaping at the pyrotechnics showering up and down the streets. It went on like that for hours and the next morning, when we pulled ourselves awake, the street was covered in about 4 inches thick of fireworks leftovers.

Later that summer, I remember watching gangs (and I mean this in terms of numbers, not necessarily identification) young black men swarming in the middle of the streets, the music thumping from 20 different cars, and their voices rising up, cresendo after cresendo until I was certain someone was going to get killed.

Every Sunday, there isn't an inch of space for parking as the congregates of the Ethopian Coptic Church flock dressed in their white veils into the neighborhood for long services that usually include food (roasted goat on some occasions that they broil on a spit in the parking lot), drums and the most amazing chanting followed by the high-pitched throat warble of the women.

It was on such a Sunday and the morning after another enormous party in the streets that I met our neighbor across the street. He was in his little white car driving nowhere, just pulling forward then backward again and again and again, ramming the car behind him with greater and greater force. He was pissed that the church-goers had parked in his driveway, which I found ironic as his car was not even parked in the driveway. It was, as I've describe, on the street rocking back and forth, back and forth into the car behind it.

I wasn't used to such behavior, so I did what any good citizen of the city does. I ignored him. Ann, (being from Wisconsin where good neighbors don't let neighbors act stupid) on the otherhand, took up arms and went straight out into the street to tell the neighbor to knock it off. I didn't hear the whole conversation, but as Ann walked away from the scene I heard her say "mother fucker" and I knew, if it was loud enough for me to hear it, it was loud enough for him to hear it.

Ironically, the mother fucker's name is Dick and more than once we've been party to his liberal brand of racism. Liberal in that he sees himself a raging leftist all the while spouting racist quips about welfare and gangs and thugs.

Over the years, we've watched Dick and his wife, whom we call Mrs. Kravitz, weild their prowess in the neighborhood. At neighborhood meetings, they are the first to complain inciting angry confrontations with the mothers of the kids who run freely in the 'hood. They aren't innocent, these kids, but in the meeting, it's amazing to me how brazen Dick can be in calling them names, making assumptions, and spewing his often racist, privileged opinion in their direction. My favorite comment came from Mrs. Kravitz who, clearly still miffed about the parking on Sundays, said, "Can't they just have their churched in their own neighborhood?" She was not just referring to the Coptic church around the corner, but to the four other black churches scattered within a four block radius of our particular street.

I countered, cautiously with "But this was their neighborhood until we moved in!" She just threw up her hands and gave me a list of reasons why that argument didn't hold water.

Part of the neighborhood group's work is to send out newsletters via email to everyone who signs up. They keep us up-to-date on meetings with the police department, problems with mail delivery, the latest robberies, and their efforts to stop cheap liquor from being served in the neighborhood stores. Dick contributed last week and at the end of his posting was a website for his blog. Yes, the man blogs. I suppose, since he was "let go" from Amazon (we have many suspicions why they let him go...intolerant bigoted asshole top of the list) he has time on his hands and he fills this time by blogging.

I couldn't resist. I read his posts and in them detected the same tone with which he reacted to Ann calling him a mother fucker. He rails against the president, spews mighty fire about the war, and in the same breath, complains about, yes, the parking on Sunday and the crack house on the corner.

I once had a student, years and years ago, who brought me a list of words she felt I should assign for the next vocabulary test. She told me she put "audacity" at the top of the list because she thought every high school student should use it when referring to the corrupt adults who rule the country. I'm not sure whatever happened to her, but I loved her spunk so "audacity" landed on the next week's vocab list and has been on just about every vocab list I've assigned every year since.

Dick has audacity. Mrs. Kravitz, too. She has her nose in everyone's business and he has his nose perpetually bent out of joint.

We're civil neighbors. We smile and wave and say, "Good morning" and last summer we even went to one of their "Concerts in the Garden" series. Still, when we talk about them in the confines of our own home, they are simply Dick and Mrs. Kravitz, though now I think it shall be Mrs. Kravitz and the Blog Across the Street.