THE NEW NEIGHBOURHOOD

There are times, especially in the tranquility of summer days, that I think this ain't such a bad neighbourhood. Its mature trees and large lots make it feel pleasant on quiet mornings and serene evenings.

This year the guy three doors down isn't even blasting the best of Bob Segar for ninety minutes every afternoon at four. The nutjobs across the alley are fairly quiet with their public blasting of Regina's worst examples of radio.

The band is long gone and the dog shit hillbillies moved to a house with a mortgage on 4th and Pasqua, their family members on my other side ushered off to another McNab rental when someone bought their old house at the beginning of summer (it's getting renovated and no one lives there yet.)

But the band house, the one with the huge garage (now rented separately by a guy with a blue collar business) has exciting new tenants as of two months ago. The tiny shack of a house was gutted and thoroughly renovated. We hoped for a higher class of people, one's with at least a sense of smell. We lucked out on the latter.

The new neighbours to our north arrived with two shopping carts of stuff on June 1st. They appear to walk most places and the carts are their rented moving vans, now discarded in the alley.

Frank and Donna, like everyone other renter I've encountered in this hood, smoke and have a terrible cough resembling advanced emphysema, not your everyday smoker's cough. As was observed by some guests at our BBQ, Frank likes to lounge outside in his robe. Jan thinks said robe is a hospital robe. But most times he's shirtless and in jeans.

There's something cognitively wrong with Frank. I thought I heard him tell another neighbour he was deaf--he talks like it--but he can hear fine and without any visible aids.

He introduced himself to the people renovating the house on our other side yesterday. I thought they were workers but I guess one of them does own the house and his wife was paying him a visit.

"Yeah, I'm Frank and my wife's name is Donna, she's half Chinese. Is this your wife?"

"Yes, this is my wife."

"Oh, we moved here about two months ago from the hood. I was getting tired of the death treats to me and my dogs and I like this neighbourhood, it's not a bad neighbourhood, eh. A good dog neighbourhood, you know?"

He loves his dogs. They live in two carefully placed dog houses in his backyard, facing his plastic table, away from the locked, rusted deep freezer strangely kept outside. The dogs are very, very old and rarely make a sound. Plus, their shit don't stink. Probably because it isn't in a ten foot high pile like the last occupants.

Like the new neighbours to our north, we've avoided the new neighbours to our south. I don't think we want them talking to us everyday about, probably the same small talk. I certainly wouldn't want him standing at my front door in his robe trying to borrow a cup of sugar. I'm sorry.

They always seem to be awake. I went out for a whiff of fresh air at 4 AM once and they were awake and outside smoking. 6 AM they're quite active and 8 AM too. 4 PM is outdoor happy hour, as it is with all white trash, I've discovered. 

They are rarely seen in mornings though. At first I thought they worked as cleaning staff all night. Then I thought maybe they worked in bar till 4 AM (they wore shirts for some bar once.) But now I'm thinking they don't work at all. I heard Frank on the phone the other day telling someone, like a social worker or something, that he needed a new pair of shoes.

Their fixed up place now rents for 500 dollars--or so he tells everyone he meets, two or three times per conversation.

For some reason Frank hammers on his fence at 7 in the morning for about five minutes. This wakes Aiden up and subsequently Jan. She's pissed and her day is ruined. It just happened today, on a Sunday morning. Frankly, I think he just whacks on it, I don't think he is capable of hammering a nail.

I used to avoid mowing the lawn in the mornings because I didn't want to wake Frank and Donna. It was no problem to me. I was happy to have the mornings quiet and peaceful outside. But this is just weird and psychotic. If nothing else, it's rude. A concept many McNabbers don't grasp.

There have been times when thinking about my future that I question my ethics for not wanting to live among the poor and illiterate: the other half of society. I've wondered about the desire we all have to live in the burbs and ignore the rest of the population who is heavily tattooed, and not in a cool way, and who smokes home-rolled stinky cigarettes. The annoying half.

But I tell ya, we've had it. We've had it with all the socially-fucked up people who live in rental houses around here. We've had it with the stupidity of stupid people. There's something after all to be said about people who live in the good neighbourhoods. Maybe it isn't so bad to live among people who worry about what other people think of them, who are anal about their lawns, who close their windows during their domestic disputes and who don't wander the neighbourhood in stolen hospital robes.