Good Fences... Or Shut up, Flanders!

The house next door is vacant. Another victim of foreclosure. I say the house is the victim, because it was rented to a perfectly conscientious person who according to her was paying her rent, but the owners, who were our neighbors briefly before they moved, let it go. Now it sits empty and empty it has been for over a year.

We have taken it to calling it "the old Patterson place" as the empty white Dutch Colonial looks like a cross between the houses in "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and "The Amityville Horror". Empty houses seem to take on a slightly sinister demeanor as soon as they are empty, as if they are sitting, brooding, waiting for to be adopted. An empty house, regardless of condition is not a happy house.

As much as we want neighbors, we are also nervous about who they will be. It is like when you are getting ready to go to college and wondering who your roommates will be. It could be good, it could be bad but it likely won't be anything in between.

We love our neighbors. Truth be told, we deal with the through-traffic going too fast, the drafty windows, the small yards and the lack of closet space because the neighborhood is cohesive and friendly. It is not a transitional neighborhood as such, more like an enclave. A small port in an otherwise stormy sea that surrounds it. To the immediate east and west are gangs and murder, to the north drugs and violence. It is never settling when your street is the setting for a high speed chase. And was the noise a backfiring car or a shotgun in the near distance?

This is why we are sweating it so much, who these new people may be. Each change having the potential to positively or negatively affect the community. Will these people love the house and care for it? Will they tend their yard and leave the porch light on at night to make up for the lack of lighting provided by the city? Will they come to the block party and sit outside and chat with the rest of us? Will they watch the house when we are gone and notice if anything looks wrong?

Conversely, will they play loud music, leave their cars in the yard, let the lawn grow wild and have barbecues without inviting me? Will they have kids who shout and run amok ripping up my finely tended flower beds and trampling my custom hybrid grass? And if they do notice we are gone, will they be watching the house for nefarious purposes?

We don't know. We can only hope. The signs as of now are good. There is an offer in on the house put in by a newly married couple, one of whom had the neighbor across the street as a third-grade teacher. Those neighbors wholeheartedly endorse these people, (assuming they get the house), but I reserve my right to draw my own conclusions. After all, it is not what I would call a "fresh" endorsement. I am pretty sure I was the vision of sweetness and light in third grade and I am sure Ms. Krug, my teacher, would say so, too. And look at me now.

The question then remains... will I be the Homer Simpson to my perfect new neighbors? Or will I be the suffering Ned Flanders to my, um, lively neighborinos? Paul Simon wrote... "I'd rather be a hammer than a nail." I couldn't agree more.

Stay tuned.