Neighbors

Painting by Terry Ananny

Here’s a book I’m going to read:  In The Neighborhood: The Search for Community on an American Street, One Sleepover at a Time, by Peter Lovenheim.  The thing is, this guy lives in a neighborhood where a murder-suicide took place in 2000.  He wondered how that could happen in a neighborhood, with apparently no warning, where nobody saw any signs, or noticed any signs.  He realized he knew few of his neighbors and they didn’t know each other. He wanted to get to know them and he set out to do it, by inviting himself to spend 24 hours with each of them, sleeping over, having dinner and breakfast with them.

I’ve been thinking about the neighborhoods I’ve lived in over the years.  Being nearly 66, I’ve lived in several, and they’ve all been here in Kitsap, a relatively quiet and seemingly safe place.  I grew up in Tracyton in the 50s.  Tracyton is still nearly as small as it was when we lived there.  The streets are wide, perfect for a bicycle or walking, the traffic is sparse, it’s pretty, green, flowery.  As a kid it was a perfect place to grow up.  Neighbors were close by, but not too close, their doors always seemed to be open to whoever dropped by, even if it was the 9 year-old daughter of an upholsterer and a housewife. I rode my bike all over the little town, down to the bay, up to the store, over to the Methodist Church, over to the vacant lot where my brother once fell in a hole and broke his leg.  I visited a house in which a woman lived who liked to knit.  There was no greater honor for me than to hold her yarn across my two arms while she wound it into a bigger and bigger ball.  I don’t remember the name of this woman, I only remember the yarn and the winding and the fact that I was always welcome.  I visited the house behind our house, a run-down place with a huge garbage pile in the yard.  There were kids in that house that I liked playing with and there was also a scary looking strap hung up on the wall of the kitchen, a strap used for spankings, I was told.  I went next door to the Curia’s house, an Italian family who had moved to Washington from Brooklyn, New York, had Franco American spaghetti in big white bowls every day for lunch and who had a pantry in their house, something I had never seen before.  Linda and David Curia’s dad, a milkman, was born in Sicily, they all had accents from New York, they were dark-skinned and exotic and their house smelled like empty cottage cheese cartons.  I went to see my friend, Darlene, whose family had a television long before we had one.  Her mother was always ready to have a friend of Darlene’s over, feeding me lunch, allowing me to sit in front of their television and watch the coronation of Queen Elizabeth in 1952.  I wandered all over Tracyton as a kid visiting this neighbor or that one, staying as long as they’d let me.  My mother didn’t mind and my brother and I would keep our ears open for the police whistle she blew that would call us home for dinner.

We moved to Chico, to my Dad’s boyhood house, when I was 13.  Maybe it was because I was 13 and involved in Junior High and new friends at school that I didn’t know our neighbors very well in the new neighborhood.  Nancy Kvinsland lived down the street and I babysat for some people across the street and our bus driver, Mrs. Ajax, lived directly across from us, but that was about the extent of neighbors I was aware of.  The street in front of our house was very busy, this was before the freeway went in, so there wasn’t a lot of walking or bicycling on it. By this time my little brother was 2 years old and my Mom was busy with him so she wasn’t out making friends, either.

We were still living at Chico when I graduated from high school. I went off to UPS for one semester and while there eloped with Jim Shrefler.  Our first house was on South Montgomery in West Bremerton and the only neighbor we had was the Navy Yard.  We didn’t live there long, it was a tiny place, tiny living room, tiny kitchen, tiny bedroom, tiny bathroom, tiny mice birthed in a kitchen drawer.  When I got pregnant we moved to North Callow to a better house in a better area, with grass and other houses around us.  We made friends with one couple who lived within 100 yards of our house and who were also starting a family.  We spent a lot of time together, playing cards, making dinner for each other, and when our babies arrived within months of each other our friendship grew even deeper.  The only other neighbor I was aware of was an “older woman” who lived across the street.  I’d see her during the summer, coming out to lay on a lawn chair in her bathing suit, tanning.  She probably was 30 and I remember thinking that she was “well preserved”, but I never knew her name.

Next stop was Audrey Street in what we used to call Navy Yard City.  Is it still called that?  Because my daughter was walking and playing outside by then I was much more aware of my neighbors.  Marco Handley lived across the street, collected clocks and antiques, made his own beeswax candles and gave my daughter a sweet old rocking chair.  Next door were the grandparents of Mitchell, my daughter’s first childhood friend and to the South, Miss Strange (her real name), who was true to her name and collected dogs.  Down the street was a young entrepreneur who sold frozen chocolate covered bananas from a motorized cart in the summer.

We moved to Olsen Road on Bucklin Hill in Silverdale when our land was bought by the State to build the Hiway 3 freeway.  Again it was my daughters (2 by now) who dictated which neighbors we knew.  Treena’s family lived across the road, Andrea’s down the street and the Morman family lived down the hill.  We stayed only 1 year at this location, renovating and moving to a house on the grounds of the Unitarian Fellowship on Sylvan Way.  There were no neighbors close by at all, but every Sunday and Wednesday there was sufficient social life for the whole family to be engaged.  

In 1974 Jim and I divorced and in 1976 I moved with my new husband to a small house North of Poulsbo, on the highway towards the Hood Canal Bridge.  This place’s memories included the day the landlord/neighbors slaughtered cows right outside my kitchen window.  I was 7 months pregnant and didn’t appreciate that they hadn’t warned me.  They were our only neighbors and though they were very religious they weren’t welcoming.  My girls were ensconced in school then and their friends lived further away than ever.

Soon after the cow executions we moved nearer to Poulsbo, into the biggest house I’d ever lived in, but still with only one neighbor.  We had a view of the slough and a lot of land around us.  My girls caught the school bus at the top of the driveway along with the neighbor kids, boys who eventually stole things out of our cars.  The neighbor experiences were deteriorating.

We lived in this big house until our baby boy was 3 and then we moved to Kingston, into a house my husband’s parents had built and lived in for several years.  They had moved closer to Kingston and we didn’t have enough money to buy, so we rented from them.  Neighbors at this place consisted of my husband’s aunt and uncle, the family of a little girl that my son became friends with when he started Kindergarten, a family across the road and up the hill who I’d met when he was in pre-school.  It was a rural road with houses far apart and lots of empty fields, people were separated by space and woods.  We became pretty close to the family up the hill and our youngest children played together while we drank tea and talked about our lives.  It was the first real “good neighbor” experience since my first daughter was little and it lasted for almost 8 years--until my husband and I broke up and my son and I moved to the Viking Crest Apartments back in Poulsbo.

I loved living at the apartments because of the extraordinary view and the location so close to town.  My son already had friends in Poulsbo, kids that he’d befriended in grade school and were now in Middle School.  He made a couple of friends who lived in other apartments, but I didn’t.  It’s an usual thing, I think, to live in apartments but to have your neighbors unknown to you.  Living so close you would think that some kind of camaraderie would develop, but it wasn’t that way.  I could hear the man downstairs snoring at night, through the floor of my bedroom, but I never met him, couldn't have picked him out in a line-up.  I went to the pool in the summer and used the sauna often, but nobody ever approached me and I was too shy to approach them.  I made one friend while I was there for the three years that we lived there and it was a man who I tried a relationship with, which failed.  Even at Halloween, when bags and bags of candy were distributed through our opening doors, we didn’t exchange hellos.  Maybe it was that physical closeness that was too much for people--what if you made a friend and there was a falling out?  They’d be right there, under your nose, impossible to avoid.  It still seems strange to me though. 

Now I live in another rural neighborhood.  Each house is on 2 1/2 acres and sits back away from our common road with a buffer of trees between each house and the road.  I know more neighbors here than I have since my daughters were little.  We have a yearly meeting because we have dues and covenants, so we see each other then.  We have a yearly road and yard cleanup and many of us participate and eat together afterwards.  One couple asks us to feed their birds and watch their house while they are gone.  We ask the same of them.  Over the years a relationship with them has evolved, but still, we don’t have coffee or tea or beers together, or play cards or have a daily or even weekly friendship.  Most of us are retired, we sometimes see each other at the mailbox or driving in or out.  There are a couple of families with young children who live in the neighborhood but we never see the kids outside of their yards or playing with each other.  It seems the days of kids visiting other families in their neighborhoods is over.  The days of coffee klatches are over.  I suppose the kids in our neighborhood go to daycare, their mothers and fathers both work.  They may be home only in the evening.

Just what to make of all this?  When I first started writing I expected that I would be able to make some kind of sociological statement about the loss of neighborliness or something of the sort.  But as I wrote I realized it was me that had changed more than neighborhoods and our parts in them.  I enjoy knowing some of my neighbors, it’s a feeling of safety to know that you have a phone number to call, a familiar face in case of need, but I savor my alone time so much, for writing, reading, gardening and other solitary pursuits, that I don’t encourage visitors.  We live rather far apart, it is true, but all are within a short walk.  It isn’t because they aren’t friendly or at home--it’s me.  When I had kids I suppose neighbors were a lifeline, society for a young mother, company.  Work was that way, too; people to exchange greetings with, share a day with, commiserate over life’s troubles.  But since I’ve retired I don’t seem to feel the need for company as much, so neighbors aren’t tempting, being neighborly (what would that mean, anyway? tea? gossiping?) isn’t something I strive for, nor is it something I actively ignore.  I just keep to myself, do my thing, engage with neighbors when they happen by or at meetings or on cleanup days.

I do think fewer people are at home these days--parents are working, kids are at daycare before and after school, making friends there and in school, rather than next door.  Maybe there is a little less trust.  Retired people are energetic and out doing things, not sitting on their porches waiting for someone to come by.  But as for my experiences as they pertain to neighbors, it’s all my own doing, or not doing, as the case may be.