A bitter Harvest….
His last hurrah was when we had our roof re-done. The nails flew. of course, and he must have gone out at night in his bare feet looking for nails.
So how did I know?
In the morning there would 1-6 roofing nails neatly piled on our back porch. Like some twisted depraved tooth fairy. I guess we were supposed to think Santa or Jesus left them there. If I was out at night and found them, I’d very quietly throw them one at a time into his pachysandra. I have no doubt that one day an owner of the house will pull up the garden on that side and find it loaded with rusty roofing nails.
Eventually, he retired and took a part time job fixing furniture, but he quit when I ascertained his hours and cut grass while he worked.
He spent less time on the porch, and eventually kids began riding bikes over his lawn, even shredding the flowers that framed his front walk. He picked a huge fight with the neighbor across the street that had cops showing up at least twice a year. He must have tired of the fight, cause the cops always took the neighbor’s side.
Kids eventually moved on to his back garden and pulled everything up, The cops wouldn’t even respond. His blue glass ball was smashed–a new one smashed a week later. He left the empty pedestal sit, but then it to was smashed on Halloween. Strokes put him on a walker, and he continually fell trying to use the walker to watch me and the other neighbor cut our lawns. His precious garden went to seed. He tried to hire guys to cut his lawn, but they’d quit when he’d threaten to not pay them for mistreating his wonderful grass. Remember, he used a riding mower so he never touched the grass–contractors back then only used riding mowers for real lawns, not postage stamp sizes.
My mom actually heard him once obscenely berating his wife on the back porch. And of course, one day an ambulance took him away, never to return.
When he died, no one went to his funeral. His widow only left the house to sweep the gutter onto neighbors’ sides. When she died, their daughter put fliers in everyone’s mailbox of the funeral date, deriding them for not showing up when her father died, and reminding folks that they should be a good neighbor and attend her mother’s funeral.
I don’t think it worked.