Here on Main Street: Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

Do you know your neighbors?

I remember when I was a kid, I knew everyone who lived on my street, even people the next street over. It would have been weird not to know them. I would have had to go out of my way to not talk to them.

My next door neighbor was my schoolmate Maryellen, and she remains a great friend to this day. Across the street were Mel and Martha and their sons. Around the corner was Ann, who did my mother’s hair and helped me that time someone hit me in the head with a rock in the schoolyard.

There was Mrs. Decker, an older woman who lived in the rundown, vine-covered, spooky house two doors down. She called me “Babe Ruth” because I was always playing baseball in my yard. I’d be walking home from school and when I went by her house she’d yell “Babe Ruth! Babe Ruth!” She’d give me money to go to the supermarket to get her a bunch of bananas. No bread, no milk, no frozen dinners. Always bananas. She gave me a quarter for my troubles, which, to be honest, wasn’t even a lot of money in 1974.

The corner store was run by Joe and Phil and Ann, the place where my mother got her meat and I bought way too much junk food on Friday nights. Candy bars and Hoodsies and bags of crunchy snacks.

I used to play with the white-haired, ragged mutt next door. He’d come over and jump all over me and keep me company on the front stairs.

Of course, not all of my neighbors were so friendly. We had an old woman who lived in one of the two other apartments in the large house where we also lived – who would scream and swear through the walls at us every single day. (I’m not joking – every single day.) I would go into the little pantry to get a can of soup or a box of cereal and I’d hear her yelling “#*$%@!” and “^!#*&$!” and sometimes even “@$%&*#!” She’d bang on the walls, slam doors. She’d glare at us from her porch. We were careful not to go into her section of the yard. One day she even threw a bucket of water at my sister.

I’m not sure what we did exactly to incur her wrath. I should ask my sister.

I currently know one of my neighbors. She lives upstairs and we see each other all the time (she has to pass my front door when she leaves her place), and we shovel the same stairs every time it snows. People who shovel together know each other well.

But the other people on my street are just people I see in passing, people I notice as I walk up my stairs, people I’ve given titles to. “Guy who never parks correctly” and “That lady who smokes all the time” and “Cranky old man with the mean dogs.”

I wonder when, exactly, it all changed. Is it because we live online lives now? That’s part of it but not the entire reason. Is it because we’ve become separated by politics and personality? Do we just want to keep to ourselves now and not bother taking the time to get to know each other, even if we live right next to the person?

I’ve lived in this apartment for 30 years and don’t know my neighbors that well. I guess that’s as much my problem as it is theirs. A few of them have lived here almost as long as I have.

Sometimes I wish I lived next to a Wilson like on Home Improvement, who would dispense advice and historical trivia while standing behind a fence, showing only half his face. Or maybe I could be the Wilson of my neighborhood. Only at my height you wouldn’t see any of my face.

That would never happen anyway. I live on the second floor and don’t have a fence.

Maybe I should borrow a rake or a cup of sugar from one of them? Get to know them that way. Bring a little cup with me and ask, “I’m sorry to bother you, but can I borrow a cup of sugar?” I’ve seen a lot of people do that on TV shows and it seems to work.

Nah, I can’t do that. Then I’d be “Guy who borrows sugar.”