I have decided that one of my neighbors has left, they moved away and have abandoned their home. I arrived at this conclusion based on a number of circumstantial pieces of information.
1) They put their home up for sale about windy time, so Oct/Nov. By thanksgiving they took the sign down.
2) They bought the home about 1.5 years ago - the high of the market.
My Guess - Unable to sell, they used their good credit and bought another home at a lower price and smaller mortgage. They took out the few thousand they had possibly available in this house next to me for the new one, if any - or saved up a few thousand and went ahead.
4) Then they moved out about 30-45 days ago. No one has come by except one day when one of the former occupants stopped, ran out and into the house and then back into the car.
That isn't the reason for this story though, just a quick side story is all.
My other neighbor. He believes in certain ideals or holds certain beliefs very, very strongly. Always has his entire life. He will never ask for help, he will never curse, and to my knowledge he never has. His wife once told me that he was in Yosemite and got his foot stuck in a crevice, and rather than call for help, he sat there for 20 hours until the swelling went down and he could pull his foot out by himself.
He believes what defines him as a person is his independence and commitment. When he gives his word, he keeps it, when he says something he sticks to it, when he commits to not cursing, he will not, regardless of the event or issue. People come to rely upon these certainties, we expect him to be this way.
A few years before they got married, his wife told me about another story - he told his grandmother he would move her washer out of her home. The movers were supposed to do it Monday morning at 7 am, but it was an old washer and had porcelain outside parts and inside parts and the grandmother was afraid it would get broken. It was too heavy for one person but this neighbor of mine told her he would do it and he went to it, Sunday night around 11 (when he got home from his irregular hours at work). As he moved the washer and lifted it sideways, it slipped squashing his foot and getting stuck. To free himself, he would have had to drop the washer onto its side, breaking the porcelain. Instead, he sat there for eight hours until the movers showed up at 6:40 and helped him move it.
Stubborn. Yes. But when he said something, he did it. Always helping, trying to help, sometimes creating issues where none existed until he cleared them up, but always willing to be there.
A few weeks ago he was working in his garage and I heard this yell and a stream of curse words followed by more expletives and a voice calling my name (he knew I was in my garage) for help.
He had cut into his arm with the electric saw, was bleeding profusely (he had lost a great deal of blood through the very large and long slice on his arm) and needed his other hand to hold the cut closed as best possible, and apply pressure. Had he released it to open a door or pick up a phone, or even get something to cut off bloody supply, he could have lost even more blood.
I thought about this as I drove him to the hospital. He cursed and called for help. Two things he has never done before. I wondered if those new conditions changed anything about him or in him - was he the same, and were these simply events that were necessary at that moment to survive, and not indications of a fundamental change in his character.
It might be easy to follow through - curse more often and less independent than before, but sometimes for survival, certain things are needed, necessary - morally required, even if they violate every principle and ideal you may hold. Sometimes.
I would rather he did, than hold to his principles and die on the floor.
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