How You Appreciate a Quiet Midwestern Town and Neighbors at a Distance

Through the warps and ripples of antique glass

Outside my window there’s a one way street. At least once a day a car misses the sign and heads straight into oncoming traffic. The error elicits a cacophony of honking horns and screeching tires. I always stop working at the sound and turn to observe. I haven’t seen any crashes yet, but I remain hopeful.

My next door neighbor has a tiny little dog with a bladder the size of a pea. She walks her dog nine times a day always wearing the same windbreaker. She never zips the jacket up no matter if it’s snowing, raining, ten below zero, or ninety degrees and humid. The windbreaker billows around her like Biblical robes. She’s got a huge yard, but she always trots her dog up to my little patch of grass. He sniffs delicately before picking his spot.

Across the street is a wine bar. They’ve continued clandestine operations throughout the quarantine. People park surreptitiously around the corner and sneak over to the front door glancing around in terror. You can tell they are otherwise honest because they’re so terrible at not drawing attention to themselves.

Further down the road is an assisted living facility. At least once a week an ambulance is called to render aid to one of the residents. At the sound of the siren, the patrons of the wine bar assume it’s a police raid and they throw themselves in the river behind the building to escape. Sometimes I open the window, turn up my computer speakers, and play a recording of a siren. That’s also funny. I have loud speakers.

My home was built the same year Wild Bill Hickok moved to Deadwood, South Dakota. I can’t remove the storm windows in the summer because they’re only staying together out of habit. The panes of glass are rippled with age. The distortion makes you appreciate how long this house has been here. I’m just another stranger passing through.

There are wasps living in my walls. I’ve become very good at killing wasps against a pane of glass. The trick is to take a post card and carefully place it over the wasp. Then, you gently apply pressure to trap the insect. The post card is too thick for the stinger to penetrate. You can’t slap an antique window, but you can push your thumb against a postcard until you hear the body crunch. Sometimes wasps come and land on my window and peer in at me as if they know what I’ve done.

I always let my grass get too long, and there are dandelions everywhere. There are at least three squirrels that live here. Last week they dug up the tulip bulbs my wife planted and sat and ate them defiantly right outside my window. As they eat, the frantic churning of their jaws is oddly juxtaposed with the absolute stillness of the rest of their body. They peer around in all directions which is comical because they never seem to notice me.

More recently I’ve had robins digging for worms and the occasional rabbit. A few days ago there were a couple of mallard ducks who had apparently gotten lost on their way to the river. There are at least five whitetail dear that live in the park down the road. They venture out along the sidewalk late at night.

I know it’s four thirty when I see my neighbor walking home from work. He’s a mail carrier. He wears a wide brim, standard issue Post Office sun hat throughout the year. He’s always puffing on a cigarette as he walks by. I usually wave, but he never sees me. Once I asked him about it and he said, “In thirty-five years of delivering mail, I’ve learned not to look into windows. You won't like what you see.” He’s approaching retirement. When I ask him how many days he has left, he tells me he’s not keeping count, then he rattles off the exact number of months, weeks, days, hours and minutes he has left. The last I asked, he was down to single digits.

During normal times, I’d see my wife pull up in her blue Subaru Forester at five. Her arrival means it’s time to close up shop and have dinner with the family. These days she’s working from home so I close up shop a little earlier.

The kids are home too, sometimes they go running by, stopping only to wave and smile. When they do that, I remember how their faces looked when their cheeks were puffier or their smiles had a gap because they’d lost a baby tooth.

It’s a nice neighborhood with just enough going on to give you a distraction when you need one.

I was kidding before, I don’t really want to see any crashes.

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