William Marvel: Neighborhoods

Late this summer our next-door neighbors moved away, and new ones moved in. For most of my life, the term “next-door” carried a connotation of about a quarter of a mile in distance, at least here on Davis Hill. That, after all, is the minimum distance that ought to separate different households. People were not meant to live cheek-by-jowl, and trouble is not far behind whenever they begin to do so. Since the mid-1990s, however, even on Davis Hill any mention of something “next-door” has conjured an image of a habitation standing within sight, and in my case within easy carbine range.

After talking about it for a week or two, and lamenting that the garden was coming in too slow to offer a respectable housewarming gift, my wife went over to introduce herself. She can’t help it; she’s from Kansas. New neighbors are always welcome out there, instead of merely tolerated. I’ve tried to convey to her the wisdom of the more cautious Yankee way of getting to know the neighbors. First, I explained, you have to determine whether they are people you really want living that close to you. You listen for screaming children, or dogs that are allowed to bark all night, or music so loud that it seems intended as a challenge to confrontation. Before you make nice with strangers, you at least want to know whether they’re really meant for the country, or if they’re just more suburban refugees who can’t sleep without leaving an outside light burning all night, to scare the boogeyman away.