This Old Neighbor

Will never watch This Old House the same way again. Always marveled at the skill of the craftsmen. Richard soldering pipes. Roger caressing root balls. Norm inserting rabbets into dadoes. Tommy tooling mortises and tenons. Drill. Screw. Fasten-ating to watch. What I never appreciated before was those poor suffering neighbors next door. What they went through. Now I do.

Trucks blocking the driveway. Earth-moving machines bigger than the house. Louder than B-52’s. Bulldozer guy who seems to enjoy banging boulders with his shovel just to get his rocks off. So to speak. For some reason shirtless young carpenters’ hammering doesn’t annoy me quite as much. Photo voltaic panels save energy. Great. As long as you don’t like trees. Oh, and the gigantic garbage bin couldn’t have been dumped anywhere but our front doorstep?! Bong. Clang. And it’s not a muted drab brown. No. It’s screaming RED. Like Brasil feels about Germany today. At least the porta-potty is on the other neighbor’s lawn.