Someone's Knockin' at the Door, Somebody's Fallin' Off the Porch

By: Elizabeth Redhead Kriston

When my new neighbor appeared on my front porch and peeked in through the screen door, my hopes were raised. We had met briefly when he moved in with his wife and dogs a few weeks earlier, but we had not had time to get to know them. I walked to the door with a smile and greeted him with a cheerful, “Hi Brett.”

As soon as I smelled him, I knew this was not going to turn out well.

I grew up in a close-knit community with awesome neighbors. The three-story houses that we all called home were nestled behind deep grassy front lawns along the tree-lined street secreting elaborate backyards which were adorned with gardens, swing sets, treehouses and basketball hoops.

Kids spilled out from the homes onto the street chasing each other in games of tag or racing bikes along the sidewalks. Most of my childhood days were spent outside running around and through all the yards of our eclectic neighbors alongside all the kids I considered my friends.

In poor weather we hung-out indoors writing and producing plays that we put on for the neighbors, selling tickets to all who would hand over the 25-cent admission. We had sleepovers and shared meals. We visited the older folks listening to stories while we gawked at all their bric-a-brac and sucking on the hard candies they gave us.

We had epic block parties.

Those parties were the times when all the families gathered and talked, shared drinks, ate potluck style, and square danced in the twilight of those annual summer evenings. Before we do-si-doed and swung our partners round and round, the artists mingled with the blue and white collared workers that inhabited the pretty homes on our block.

The kids decorated bikes with tissue paper and raced up and down the middle of the street. The barriers that blockaded our street freed us from the confines of the sidewalks. It was an amazing feeling to speed down the center of the street that was forbidden the other 364 days a year. Our bikes rode smoother and faster on the open road. The air rushing through our unhelmeted heads was cooler. We were cooler.

These times and people made the less happy parts of my childhood bearable.

I wanted my kids to have the same happy experiences. I wanted them to find a community of friends and adults whom they could trust. I wanted to hear their laughs and screams of fun radiating off of the houses up and down the street. I wanted to ply the other kids with Kool-Aid and homemade chocolate chip cookies.

When it was time to buy a house, I purposefully picked a home on a street where the houses were close with the grassy yards intersected so my kids could run through the neighborhood with the other kids under the protective eye of all the families on the street. I wanted to have annual block parties and recreate the happy times I had for them.

Things did not work out as I had envisioned.

Though several neighbors have kids who played with my kids, the reality is that times have changed, drastically. Most kids are too busy with extracurricular activities to play outside in the deep backyards until their parents call for them to come in for dinner or baths and bedtime. Most parents are too protective to let their kids roam freely fearing the worst. Most adults are too busy to form trusting relationships with their neighbors.

Whether its sports or school work or video games, kids do not spend endless hours riding bikes and playing tag up and down the street. Every once in a while, a neighbor kid would come over for a smore or splash in the sprinkler. Sometimes we would have kids over to catch fireflies or wave sparklers in the warm summer evenings. Occasionally, my kids and the neighbor kids would build a snowman together.

Mostly, there was silence. 

Kids didn’t roam the neighborhood. In fact, when I did hear kids outside, I wondered what mischief they were up to. “What are those hooligans doing out on the sidewalk in front of my house,” I’d ask myself. I felt like old Mr. Wilson.

We did become close with a few neighbors.

We have had parties and barbecues with neighbors. We watch football games together. We've celebrated holidays together whether it is a turkey on Thanksgiving or viewing fireworks from our roof on the 4^th of July. We watch each other’s kids and dogs. We look out for each other.

A few have stayed for the long haul, but most have moved on.

I suppose all good things must come to an end. Now that my girls are teens, they are not looking for playmates in the neighborhood. They just want rides to their friends’ homes who live on the other side of town. While they may not mourn the loss of good neighbors, I sure do. I miss having those spur of the moment adult interactions like sipping wine on the patio as we share funny stories about our day.

Losing our next-door neighbors created a void in our lives we have been waiting to fill. 

When the first set of replacement neighbors started to unload their things, we rushed over and enthusiastically welcomed them to the neighborhood. The woman told us she was a single mom of a teen boy who was staying in another town for the first two months.

We anxiously awaited the arrival of this presumably nice boy who might be convinced to cut our grass or walk our dogs when we left town for vacation. Needless to say, when he appeared with his pants slung below his butt and his cap askew his bowed head covering his eyes, he strode into the house with an arrogance of complete disrespect for all other humans, our hopes were dashed.

This 16-year-old father of two was just released from juvie. Having received his High School certificate while behind bars he had nothing to do all day but lay around, play video games, sell and smoke weed (and who knows what else) and sneak in and out of the house with his friends at all hours off the day and night. We installed curtains and cameras and prayed for them to move out.

The day they left, our new neighbors moved in. Hurray!!

This new neighbor stood before me on our front porch. As my nostrils burned from his aroma, I noticed his drooping eyelids and bloodshot eyes. I watched him sway and try to steady himself by leaning on the porch swing. He slurred something about wanting to invite us to have a beer or go to bed. I hoped it was the beer. As it was just noon, I graciously declined and suggested he may have had his fill of beer and that he might want to take a break. 

He disagreed a left in search of that beer.

He reappeared an hour later even more intoxicated. It took him a good three minutes to make it up the four steps to our front door. Once swaying in place in front of our screen door, he proposed the beer idea to my husband. Feeling that is was not a good idea, my husband suggested they talk about it in the driveway. The neighbor turned to leave, tripped over his own feet and took a header off our porch, plummeting three feet below knocking his shoe from his foot which landed a good ten feet from where he sat dumbfounded.

It took him considerably less time to go down than up.

My husband tended to the dazed and confused drunk man who sat on the pavement with his headphones resting askew on his forehead. My husband tried to explain to the numbskull that he was on the ground because he fell.

I dialed 911.

The cops gave him the ultimatum, “You can go to the hospital or you can go to jail. Your choice,” I realized any chance of having a good relationship with our new neighbors vanished with the ambulance.

At least I have the neighbors on the other side to commiserate with. We share texts and laughs about all the goings on in our little hamlet. I’m sure one of us will move eventually. Until then we will talk through the fence and enjoy the occasional drink fireside while our tweens and teens embrace their inner child and catch lightning bugs and play spud in the evening light.