Saturday, November 15
There is classical music blaring, just blaring from the parking lot next door. All my windows are closed up tight, and it's still loud enough that I could identify the piece if I knew what it was. I know without peeking that it's coming out of the speakers of one of the white-haired skinny old man's motorcycles. I love my neighborhood.
Our other neighbors in the apartment building across the way include Smokey Joe, aka Mork. We named him Smokey Joe because several times a day he walks over by the dumpster, smoking a cigarette, and stands there, Walkman on, cap on, in his Army jacket, stilly smoking. Then he walks back in. Sometimes he carries a small bag of garbage, but usually he's just out there to smoke. I saw him once without the cap, and he's shiny bald on top, but with long salt-and-pepper hair on the sides. Our former next-door neighbors named him Mork because of the Walkman. They believed he was getting orders from the mothership on those headphones. He's got a brother who walks with a walker, and a piece-of-shit former sports car which he starts up and runs every weekend. I've actually seen him drive it out of the parking lot from time to time, unlike his piece-of-shit pickup truck with the cap on it which is completely full of stuff. I think it's their only closet space. They lined the windows with paper bags at some point, to prevent theft or sun damage, I don't know. Mork is the only neighbor I've seen who's ever acknowledged the heartbreakingly skinny stray cat who lives in the area.
We've also got a neighbor who's got the physique and posture of C. Montgomery Burns, and the head of Beavis. He tends to wear high-water pants or shorts which show off his skinny, pasty legs. I walked behind him for a block or two once, past Moe's Bait and Tackle, and he was weaving and wobbly. I don't know if he was drunk that early afternoon or suffering from something else.
Our other neighbors include Rae Dawn, who keeps getting new cars with Delaware plates, and the Red-Headed Poof, who once woke up to find "Sex Slave" written in the snow on his car's windshield. There's Rene, who may actually really be named Rene. He's a nice little man with a bad limp and a wife who's always hanging out the window of their second-floor apartment. We can't forget the Noisy Family, no matter how hard we try: every trip they take features the parents bickering and the three children whining, wailing and grousing as they get buckled into the car. Every time. I don't know why they bother. There's the Security Guy, who was the only one who tried to get to work after a particularly huge blizzard, ultra-suspicious super spy Bora Milutinovic and his scruffy little dog Floormop, happy bickering couple Victor Navasky and Betty Friedan, and the Guy Who Lives For His Stupid Corvette. He's got a German Shepherd and a girlfriend who once applied deodorant in her car, in full view of our former neighbor (the one who named Mork and the Red-Headed Poof). This wouldn't be too notable but for some reason she removed her shirt to do it.
The last one I can think of is the Backy Uppy Guy, who's got a honkin' big flag on his honkin' big minivan in which he sits with the motor running for hours at a time in the summertime. He also has a backup alarm on his car which meep meep meeps several times a day with its wheezy screech since his parking spot apparently can't be reached by going forwards. I'm not sure he knows what the D setting means on that thing.
These are the people in my neighborhood.5:25 PM
These are the people in my hood.
These are the people in my neighborhood.
And most of them are up to no good.
