Dispatch from River City*

“An old Russian joke tells about a poor peasant whose better-off neighbor has just gotten a cow. In his anguish, the peasant cries out to God for relief from his distress. When God replies and asks him what he wants him to do, the peasant replies, “Kill the cow.” - Chuck Colson in the Christian Post

            I live in a small town along the Ohio River where the living is affordable for someone with a meager income, and the neighborhood is safe. The drug dealers live mostly across the river, and the users mostly OD quietly without a lot of fuss. Their souls drift upwards, I suppose, while I’m asleep. The evident crime is quiet and quite ordinary, also. Domestic abuse, vehicular infractions, assaults, illegal possessions, and drunken and disorderly pretty much fill the bill. Convicted pedophiles, who are often the product of some nasty divorces, occupy spare rooms here and there. Embezzlement is the real copperhead in the grass around here, but it most often hangs out in the wealthier developments.

             My neighbors are mostly blue collar and minor professionals, sprinkled with some well-to-do, the retired, disabled, and felons. Racially, it’s white bread Appalachian, which means that I live within a fractal of family trees and simmering feuds, which waft in all directions on the breeze like honeysuckle.

            A sophisticated persona is a rather rare thing in this neck of the woods, but what personas abound, you’ll get a lot of. Like the Woody Allen joke: Two women are seated at a restaurant, and the first says, “The food isn’t very good here.” To which the second replies, “Yes. But they give you so much of it!”  It’s not uncommon when talking with the rednecks around here to watch them pause at the end of a statement, as a sort of verbal stare down which is reflexive.

            At worst around here, you’ll find some very truculent failure. As featured in a recent Facebook posting of mine:

             It's all too common back here for people to get large, ferocious dogs and not train them, but just to let them run loose - and likewise, with their children. They grow larger but they're not raised. They're not taught to work, how to hold a job, to be responsible... you all know the drill. But I was sitting in the hot tub at the pool today with this likable enough fellow who began a conversation about his kids (with former wife) who he'd since tossed out of the house. They'd never gotten a driver's license.

             They just drove anyway. No insurance. His son was upset about something and ran four stoplights on the way to stop 'a friend' from stealing his dog - finally T-boning this woman and her child. He ended up with a dislocated hip, and cursing loudly at the cops. I told the fellow that his son would likely meet an early end. This didn't seem to bother him. He laughed. I also told him, that if I were the cop I'd probably step on his dislocated hip real hard. This didn't bother the fellow either. He was smiling almost gleefully about what a nuisance his son was.

            And I had an epiphany.

            These people are not ashamed of the children they've raised (nor the vicious dogs they let loose in the neighborhood). Rather, they revel in their relations' intransigent, worthless, stubborn, anti-social behavior, as if it were a badge of honor, not truckling to any standard of responsible behavior. I am reminded of Faulkner's Trilogy featuring the Snopes clan.

            In short, the perfect place for a writer! …especially one who loves Country music.

            I sit daily at a literal buffet of humanity suitable for a modern day Chaucer’s Tales - excepting that nobody here is an anticipating penitent. No pilgrimages are taking place, because this hereabouts is… Almost Heaven. There are cuts and minced portions of Shakespearean dramas, tenderized and simmering in reductions of neighborhood squabbles. And they make perfect side dishes and special sauces to offer within my occasionally submitted personal essays and poems. And it’s quiet! Did I say that? (Except for the neighbor’s kid who bicycles past, shouting, “Mutherfuckers!”)

            My neighbor, Bob, (who recently ran for mayor of our small town), and I started out on friendly terms. When we first moved into the neighborhood our home required some work. And Bob loaned me tools (for example, a canted porch floorboard pneumatic nail gun, and later a compression hammer), a smidgeon of expertise, and the contacts with a few ‘contractors’. I would stop at his small porch servicing the ranch duplex he and his wife, Jane, inhabited on the south side of the street a couple homes east, to chat with on the return leg of walking the dog on nice afternoons. He’d offer me a beer. Or, I might walk over sometimes with two beers. We’d nod agreement over some things. We’re both MAGA supporters.

            Later on, Bob’s porch evolved into a bit of a neighborhood meeting place. His shared duplex renter was a woman with Alzheimer’s, for whom the woman across the street made a bit of money being a caregiver. And then the elderly woman had two dachshunds. And the caregiver from across the street brought her mid-sized Mutt, who was a girlfriend of Tater’s (my dachshund). Then add the two yapping white poodles of Bob’s wife. Then settle Bob‘s wife (who also had had a piece of her brain removed years ago) in there, tight. Then rotate this clockwise, milling menagerie of all sorts onto and flowing off of the small front porch of the duplex - and you’ve got the mix for the totally organic, spontaneously combusted afternoon Elm street neighborhood gathering. Oh, plus, add the husband, at times, of the neighbor caregiver, as he returned afternoons from his job as a security guard for the government offices across the river. Plus the elderly woman’s often present son. So then, we had two attending that were armed and carrying. Then, as a thickening agent, I shall add that the elderly woman’s current husband was in prison for fraud, and that the caregiver had done three stretches in the pen, herself. Personally, and as a poet, I thoroughly enjoyed this motley dynamic centered around an older woman who was quite cheerful, loved all of the activity, caught the humor bubbling up from all of it all very quickly - but couldn’t remember sh*t. “You live where?” She’d usually ask three or four times of an afternoon session, then wink. (She thought I was hot.)

            I indicated the two story frame home two houses down and kitty-corner.

            “And is this your dog?”

            I nodded.

            “I just looooooove, dachshunds!”

            So it was much like a good poem - or a deracinated Seinfeld episode - all of this cacophonous feeling and burble moving and circling the nothingness of this pleased elderly Alzheimer sufferer. Every afternoon seemed like the heavenly afterlife in soft lighting. Lions lying down with the lambs, hillbilly style, you know?

            But the very devil will have its way. And it flourishes in these parts like a weed.

            Across the street from us and two doors from Bob’s duplex is one of Belpre’s Historic Homes, beautifully renovated by a very upscale interior designer of the area. It comes with several floors and a cupola with widow’s walk from which to view river traffic. Beautifully restored huge old planks floor the side and expansive front porches. Our designer, Jake, runs his business from there, and in doing so added a showroom - an assembly well conceived as an aesthetic whole - attached to the back of the homestead. Lovely landscaped grounds surround.

            Bob had fought the improvements.

            “I’m a man of strong opinions,” Bob liked to say. “I don’t mince words about how I feel.”

            But I’d do a little politicking nevertheless, over beers. “Who else has the kind of money to restore a local treasure sitting right next door to us - who would also want to live where it sits, one home away on its west side from a dilapidated trailer court? The thing would deteriorate and likely as not, around here, end up taken over for taxes and run as a halfway house for drug offenders.”

            Bob shrugs. Take him or leave him, is what that means.

            So, the feud simmered. Nobody buries the hatchet around here.

            (The best you’re going to uncover are arrowheads, and buried Indians.)

            Next, the city refused to re-pave the mansion’s drive, which curved like a hockey stick to connect one alley’s end to the city street. The city maintained, that what was used as a street, since alley dwellers and others would use the drive to come and go, was actually the decorator’s private driveway - so the city needn’t pay for its resurfacing, and in fact, couldn’t. So our decorator decided that if it was indeed his driveway, then he would close it to through traffic. The decorator was particularly miffed by one crazy alleyway resident who would race his loud 4x4 up and down the drive to a spot about 2 blocks down the street near thirty times a day - and then race it back. (Can you spell Meth?)

            “He can’t do that,” Bob argued, “if the roadway has been in common use” (over a certain number of years). (They could easily leave their alleyway by going the other direction.)

            Bob and Jane would end up yelling curses and threats at Jake whenever Jake tried to discuss some kind of amicable arrangement over the blockade. Jane’s venom especially was scary -unhinged.

            “Bob,” I’d argue, “look at is this way. You’ve gotten free passage of his driveway for umpteen years! Why not consider it a good deal, a bit of largesse to write off, which finally reached its end?”

            Bob shrugged, and hewed to what his interpretation of the law would provide.

            So our designer neighbor barricaded off his driveway.

            Bob, in turn, (having gotten himself elected to the city council, by the barest sliver of a margin running against a former drug felon) used his influence with the city to close the alleyway to large trucks - so that our designer neighbor could not use it to deliver and remove items from his showroom.

            Our designer friend, in the interim, did not tell Bob that he now used an off-site warehouse anyway.

            Meanwhile relations with the neighbors along the opposite (west) street side of Bob continued to sour. Bob had used his connections within the city to have a handicapped zone designated just across the street from his home where he parked his vehicles - his expansive garage on the alley being too crammed with overflowing cardboard boxes for use. He personally got the determination based on his wife’s handicap and so felt that the zone was entirely hers, regardless of what other handicapped persons on the block wanted. Then, when his wife’s car’s battery died, he left the car in the handicapped zone, where it has sat for months, rather than to fix it, or move the wreck to his back alley. So his wife can’t use the car and the neighbors can’t use the handicapped parking spot. And this irritation sits like a wart directly in front of his neighbors, and squats like a toad in front of all. (Apparently by law, in our small town, you can’t leave a disabled car in your front yard - but can leave it sitting in the street.)

            Then things reached a head when Bob forced his Alzheimer’s tenant from her duplex, on the pretext of not liking her son, who stayed over some days as caregiver. Since Bob couldn’t legally evict her, he raised her rent above what she could afford and forced her out that way. This incensed the neighbor caregiver. Shouting matches ensued between her and Bob’s wife, Jane. Greetings were shouted back and forth across the street: “You stupid cunt!”

            “I’m going to the town council where you’re running for office and tell them that you’re throwing an old lady with Alzheimer’s out onto the street!”

            “It’s my property and I’m well within my rights!” Bob called back.

            She did.

            And he did.

            Our Alzheimer’s friend was eventually situated in a better home nearby her other son. But the magic (and existence) of the afternoon neighborhood clutch was gone. Meanwhile, the neighbors began taking the spots Bob used to park his cars on the far side of the street, as revenge. So Bob began strategizing his parking times so that he never left the neighbors an opportunity. So currently, all three cars of Bob’s command the off street parking on the north side opposite Bob’s home. (Two of which are near inoperable, and only one of which he commonly uses.)

            Then, around 10:30 one night in the pouring rain, a police officer appears at the neighbor caregiver’s door. Because of the shortage of off-street parking, this neighbor had parked their two cars in the driveway slot of their home. Apparently, the second car was projecting a foot or so onto the sidewalk and must be moved. The young officer was very apologetic. He had obviously been ordered to enforce the quibble at this most troublesome time. (Most probably by his chief, who probably looked to Bob as a loyal funder of police services on the council.) This, of course, enraged the caregiver neighbor with gimpy knees - as was undoubtedly intended.

            Bob’s current tenant is a convicted sexual predator, who Bob has on a month by month basis. The other early morning, I was walking my dog Tater, when I passed his tenant who was starting his car parked in front of our home. I nodded. We exchanged greetings. Then he moved his car to fill the slot Bob had just left in order to head off to place some campaign signs. Then, I’m guessing he went back to his duplex to return to bed.

            “So Bob owns him,” I declared, to my security guard neighbor, later that day in conversation.  My neighbor nodded.          

            I’m sometimes brought up on charges of being a Pollyanna for my insistence in looking at things as if the glass were half full - of being a waffler. But my impression of life is that it is a half-full glass of water floating down a very muddy river. Half-full is the reasonable person’s trade-off. You’re not above it all, or out of the swim, but still afloat. You live and enjoy the view from the upper half, and leave the other half to co-exist with the unconscious flow.  No need to visit with it more than a boat’s need to visualize its ballast.

            And, if I were to fraternize of the basis of all the half-empty beliefs of many people, I wouldn’t have time to die - even though it might kill me. Half-empty people, they just sit waiting… on their porches around here, as if suspiciously watching out for Godot. As my wife pointed out one day, “Almost Heaven is Purgatory.”

            Currently, I had an opportunity, while returning from my walk with Tater one early morning, of a ‘visualization’. (Very close to a visitation, but the lesser.) Most parked cars were off with their owners to work leaving the strings of campaign signs exposed on both sides of the street facing off against each other like opposing troops. On the west side were signs for Bob’s opposing candidate for mayor, Beverly, which extended a couple blocks of our neighbors up and down the street. On the south side was a motley of signs for Bob, extending most the length of a block.

            Then, just a few days before Election Day, this anonymously typed and sent message was delivered by mail to several neighbors on the north side:

“(Mayoral candidate) Beverly Brown despises Bob Reynolds. Drive by Bob’s house and it is obvious. This shows Beverly’s character. Every neighbor left, right 4 across the street have Beverly signs in their yard. Bob does not support Beverly in council so she has these signs to spite him. I’m here Bob and I’ll make your life hell. This has been Beverly’s lifestyle. She is mean, hateful and will push you down and grind you. She will not make a good mayor. In charge of Camden Clark ambulance wait time went from 15 min to 3 hours. She was told to retire or be fired. A hot topic in Belpre is the Belpre city school levy. After the last election Beverly came out against the levy. Now she has people saying they are voting for her because she supports the schools. A mayor can’t play both sides. I was at the Woman club debate. I wrote a question. It was not asked. I know 4 others, question weren’t asked. The woman club obviously wants Beverly for mayor. She was asked more questions. The questions that were thrown away were questions Beverly would have looked bad on. Shame on woman’s club for showing favoritism. Funny how yard signs show us the hateful signs of Beverly”

            Bob trailed last in the mayoral election returns. While headed to the gym, I spied his wife Jane standing, looking lost, on the corner of the town’s main thoroughfare onto which I was turning. “Hey, you lost?” I joked.

            “Yes, I am,” Jane said.

            She looked forlorn, pale, not healthy, and quite a bit slimmer than just a month or so ago.

            I put the car in park. I was parked in the street, but you can do this is a small town. No one was approaching.

            “Aren’t we all,” I said.

            “I wish things could all just go back the way they were. Maybe just bury the hatchet, you know, and continue as if things had never happened.”

            I nodded.

            “I don’t have anyone. No one in the neighborhood likes me. I’m in pain all the time from my arthritis. And I don’t know how to keep the dog from barking. Thanks for speaking with me.”

            I shrugged.

            “I’m glad Bob didn’t win the election,” she said.

            “Me, too.” I agreed.

            She smiled wanly. “We were right in what we did, but he didn’t have to go about it like he did.”

            I didn’t choose to disagree. “Bob, isn’t a very reasonable fellow. He seems to seek aggravation.”

            She agreed. “You’re right. It fuels him. I try to reason with him, but he just steps in closer and closer yelling, until all I can do is agree with him. …I don’t have anywhere else I can go.”

            We both remained there with our thoughts.

             “That’s a beautiful tree over there,” I said.

            The deep autumn reds were overtaking the rich deep greens in a huge oak a block away.

            “It is,” she said.

             “I appreciate your speaking with me.”

            In the intervening time between then and now, there has been no Christmas at Bob’s.  No decorations this year. And he’s wrecked his car three times since; the third time by backing into his neighbor’s garage dooe.

            If  Bob and I were still talking… (We stopped after my angry wife placed campaign posters for his opponent in our front yard. I tried an approach, but he wouldn’t look up from where he sat on the porch, and the two poodles were working up such a snarling lather from the end of their stretched tethers, I demurred.) I might say, “Bob, if winning makes your life as bad as all this, maybe you should try not winning - and see how that works out?”

            But, here again, look at how I spend my time writing essays for which there is little remuneration, and lots of opportunity to piss someone off - just for the joy of trying to catch a bit of life on a page, kind of like fishing.  So perhaps Bob and I just enjoy a different sport fish, and utilize a different bait.  Nevertheless, I think it’s true that he has a mean streak that could use cauterizing.  So, in this respect, perhaps I’m a person of strong opinions myself.

            On another note, there’s a common plaint among the those of a Progressive bent around here that it’s bad form to write poorly of the area.  That its resilience, authenticity, and rugged, homespun traditions would be better publicized, than writing of the area which is critical, that is, “punching down”.  I would respond that I chose to live here, I haven’t left - but that the Progressives are trying to censure much of what gives the region its vitality and local color, and which circulates mostly in the stories locals tell about themselves! 

            And besides, “when they begin acting different, I’ll write different.”

Old Yeller

My small yellow dachshund, Tater,

likes to race out the back door every so often

and bark! At anything, everything, and mostly nothing.

He thinks I should also,

and I'm considering.

Whenever I shift in my TV chair,

he’s up and racing out back to scrabble and howl!

What if we all stepped out our back doors

throughout the evening, hourly

 to bellow? Here and there

throughout the town.

Really got our ya-ya’s out!

Would we all then

head back inside by ten,

turn off the lights, tuck ourselves in, sigh,

and sleep better?

* Names have been changed in this essay to protect both the innocent and guilty.