Archives for category: Neighbors

NIMBY COMES HOME

April 20, 2023 //

NIMBY COMES HOME

The homelessness situation, typically referred to as a “crisis,” is much in the news. Cities and states struggle with what to do and who is to pay. Cable television waxes hysterical. Regular folks (like me?) are ambivalent about the issue. I support a humane, just solution for people in dire straits, but I also sympathize with storeowners who cannot conduct business near an encampment or pedestrians and motorists who feel threatened on the streets. Homeless individuals cannot be painted with a broad brush of moral shortcomings and criminality. However, to the extent addiction and/or desperation is endemic in the population, it is naïve to think crime and chaos are not more prevalent around them.

*****

Having lived my adult life as a homeowner in prosperous suburbia, I have not experienced the homeless issue personally. However, my wife, Katie, and I purchased a second home last year in east-central Massachusetts to facilitate visits to our son’s home near Boston and our daughter’s second home in upstate New York. This second home of ours is now in the vortex of the homelessness storm.

Let me explain: our Massachusetts condo is located in an over 55 community nestled amidst beautiful rolling hills adjacent to a sparkling lake. The development presently has 250 newly-constructed homes in five 50-unit buildings and will ultimately have 700 units in fourteen buildings.

Why was a wonderful 400-acre parcel available for condo development in densely populated Massachusetts? The site was formerly the State mental hospital and also home to wayward boys and orphans. It’s numerous large, brick buildings housed thousands of patients and juveniles, respectively, over decades ranging from about 1870 to the mid-1970’s. Many of the State buildings were razed before our construction commenced, but six still stand and are actively used by the MA social services department. These red brick behemoths ring the borders of our property. I’m told it took a decade of negotiations between the State, the local town and our developer, to finally approve our development — an over 55 community satisfied the local desire to obtain significant tax revenue without adding an influx of school-age children.

*****

When Katie and I first saw the site, we inquired about the use of the institutional buildings surrounding it.

“Those are social workers’ offices,” said the salesperson. “They sometimes see outpatients but mostly just pass paper.”

“But some of the buildings are forbidding,” we noted. “They have fences and barbed wire around them.”

“Yes,” said the agent. “But there are only 10-12 juvenile in-patients left in just one of the buildings. The buildings are largely empty. There’s not anything to be concerned about.”

Well, eighteen months later, the homeless “crisis” has deepened and Massachusetts is grasping for solutions. Apparently, someone thought of the massive, State-owned, underutilized buildings around our complex. Now, one building is being converted from office space to housing. As it happens, that building is closest to our community, in general, and looms over our swimming pool, in particular. It’s fenced-in (with barbed wire) and floodlit yard is just one hundred yards from two of our completed buildings though not particularly close to our unit.

*****

How do we feel about this situation, insulated as we are by our building’s relative distance from the likely “shelter,” and the fact we are only present about ten weeks a year? The year-around residents are abuzz with rumors and debates, not unlike what happens when a hornet’s nest is kicked.

The first reactions I saw were on-line and uniformly negative. Residents railed against the developer for not guarding against this possibility or, at least, warning about it. Now that it is apparently happening, some demand, among other things, significant fencing, lighting and security cameras. A few want armed guards. Many protested to the mayor and local representatives though it is my understanding the town and developer have no say, whatsoever, in how the State uses its buildings.

Before we arrived for our most recent three-week visit, the rumor mill variously described the characteristics of our likely new neighbors on line, as follows:

Hundreds of homeless and/or undocumented single men;
Single parent households with multiple children;
Non-English-speaking refugees awaiting sponsors;
Recently released prisoners in need of half-way housing; and
All of the above.

Upon arrival, however, I encountered a more divided and nuanced reaction. A substantial number of residents perceive the new neighbors as an opportunity to do good, namely:

Tutor young children;
Teach music, art and drama;
Provide job and parenting mentoring; and
All of the above.

Surprising to me, a majority of the “men’s group,” which includes a number of retired and near-retired teachers and social workers, are itching to help. Conversely, a substantial number of single women in the community, in particular, (obviously with exceptions in both male and female cohorts) are negative due to fear of crime. Basically, the lines are drawn on the issue of more fencing, the “do-gooders” see a positive mission of engagement and loath the idea of stigmatizing our new neighbors, while opponents argue the homeless will destroy our property values, endanger our residents and, more specifically, decry the “likelihood” their kids will invade our swimming pool after hours, maraud around our community on bicycles and will, in general, wreak havoc.

*****

Who’s right? The most recent information disseminated by community representatives is based on discussions with local and State representatives. The latter are said to have spoken with levels of knowledge on the full spectrum between complete ignorance and total certainty, but generally indicated there will only be approximately twenty intact families, fully vetted, living on one floor of one building. That took the wind out of the sails of the naysayers… for a day or two. Then the questions began circulating, as follows:

What if the homeless population keeps expanding?
What if the State views this limited placement as a “success” and chooses to expand the program?
What if (pick a catastrophe)?

*****

What, finally, is my position? Child and grandchild of immigrants that I am, I’m inclined towards the liberal, more hopeful view of the situation. However, I’m also aware of the definition of a conservative, by some, as “a liberal who has been mugged.” Not having personally experienced an assault, am I just naïve?

For perspective, I look back to my parents, both of whom were mugged at different times in the 1990’s in Philadelphia. My father’s head was bloodied, and his wedding ring stolen; my mother’s pocketbook was stripped from her arm, her shoulder permanently injured in the fracas. Most likely, their assailants belonged to the impoverished, if not homeless, strata of society. Either or both of my parents could have become embittered. Certainly, each felt disdain, or worse, for the individuals who accosted them. However, they didn’t let the experience cloud their overall views. They continued to vote for the more humane of our political parties, to support the right of all people to live in any and every neighborhood.

With appreciation for my parents’ moral consistency and admittedly with the luxury of our limited presence at our second home, I’m coming down in favor of this use of the State property. There must be some little kid who needs help in tennis or pong pong or soccer….

Tags Coming of Age, homelessness, Human Nature, NIMBY, over-55 community

Categories Modern Society, Neighbors, political beliefs

THE GIG ECONOMY, LOVE IT OR LYFT IT

March 7, 2019 //

THE GIG ECONOMY, LOVE IT OR LYFT IT

At first glance the chance to pay, for instance, $15 for a ride to the airport instead of $26, is a no-brainer. That’s pretty much the economic equation behind the decision to take Lyft or Uber rather than a conventional cab. But several other factors occasionally come into play, namely: How much of a driver’s life story do you wish to hear? Might there be a traffic issue better solvable by a “professional?” And, considering safety, is an old, dented and smelly Corolla the last vehicle you ever wish to travel in?

*****

Taxis are simple. In a large city you can stand on a corner with reasonable certainty of hailing a ride in a reasonable amount of time. The driver may be gruff in manner. In fact, the possible physical and personality traits that would prevent you from wanting to live closely with him (taxi drivers are almost always male) are limitless. However, taxi etiquette generally keeps you silent in the back seat, behind a partition. There, you ponder which obscure African or Middle Eastern nation he is from while watching the meter tick, tick, tick inexorably higher. At the end of the trip you calculate his tip-worthiness, a decision made both instantly and intimately.

*****

Uber and Lyft are different. You know the cost of the ride before you enter and, if you are old enough to remember taking standard taxis, you have an endorphin rush knowing roughly how much money you are saving.

There is no partition, no meter and no tipping. You will be free, after being dropped off, to “rate” your satisfaction on a 1-5 scale, and decide whether and how much to tip, in on-line anonymity. The fact that you have “hailed” a ride via smartphone and the driver is identified by first-name makes ride sharing seem personal. Sometimes, the driver’s baby pictures are on the dashboard for you to admire and ask the usual inanities, e.g., “How old is he?” “What’s her name?” Or, if you are taking a ride at midnight you might feel compelled to ask: “Who’s babysitting now?” Resist this temptation.

Asking personal questions is human nature but can lead one down a rabbit hole. Few people have aspired to become Lyft drivers. There is often a dissertation not finished, a divorce, an unexpected corporate downsizing. Sometimes, you learn you are a driver’s first or second ride. You learn this because they are unable to operate the app or the GPS. When they ask you for directions, it’s a bad sign.

*****

One of my earliest memories is taxi-related. Circa 1961, at age four, I traveled in a carpool to kindergarten in West Philadelphia. Each day, a yellow “Checker” cab retrieved me and three other neighborhood kids from our mothers at the corner. Could you imagine sending your child to school with a stranger nowadays? No seatbelts, either.

The cab featured an open area in front of its large back seat with a freestanding swivel-able stool we (inaccurately) called “the rumble seat.” Each day we vied to be “the one” who sat on the stool. Due to excessive strife, I’m sure the mothers eventually worked out a rotation, but the daily rumble seat controversy introduced to me the concept of dog-eat-dog competition.

The following year, I commenced being walked or driven to Gompers Elementary School. Around the same time, my mother belatedly learned to drive. Taxis thus became, for me, something to ride only on rare visits to New York City. The children who’d joined me in the taxi, along with most of the residents of the neighborhood, disappeared like characters in a Chagall painting in a frenzy of “white flight.” Due to some combination of inertia and, I hope, an all-too-rare lack of knee-jerk prejudice, my family didn’t move. Yet, for better or worse or just different, the neighborhood changed before one could even process the change. I imagine that’s how taxi drivers feel about the arrival of Uber and Lyft.

*****

Taxis are still desirable in several contexts. For instance, when we were in London last fall and needed to travel to Charring Cross Station, the “app” foretold a wait of ten minutes. Breathing fumes beside horrendous downtown traffic, ten became fifteen and, eventually, twenty. We became increasingly stressed about missing our reserved train to Edinburgh. Finally, we gave up and flagged a taxi. This “cancellation” on our part resulted in a $5 penalty. It doesn’t seem fair. But who wants to spend an hour on the phone to reverse a $5 fee?

It turns out our cancellation was serendipitous. A demonstration roiled city center, thus the worse-than-usual traffic, and all the GPS-recommended routes were blocked. A London cabbie, whose license is granted only after he passes an exam worthy of a PhD in geography and cartography, wended his way through a maze to deposit us at the exact correct spot to enter the massive train station.

Conversely, in Boston, we were first-day customers of a new Lyft driver. Fresh off a farm in New Hampshire she excelled in cuteness and vivacity. But she entirely lacked every other driver-related credential. Not only did she not know which bridge headed to Cambridge, she wasn’t sure her GPS worked. “It’s been sending me strange places all day,” she explained. Apparently, she also wasn’t sure her mirrors worked since she turned backwards and swiveled her head each time she sought to change lanes. While my wife, Katie, generously offered career and relationship advice throughout the harrowing ride, I developed a headache from cringing and would have happily paid some grumpy old guy an extra $20.

Other highlights of Boston Lyft rides included the out-of-work musician with the 1990’s-era Civic apparently retrieved from Demolition Derby that had “check engine,” “check tires” and “check brakes” sensors lit at once – like a Christmas display on the dashboard; the Brazilian driver who danced the samba in his seat throughout, and the seventeen-year-old “covering” for her boyfriend who asked if we’d mind if she vaped. “Yes,” we answered, and a sullenly silent ride ensued.

*****

One need only look at the taxi line at the airport to know the industry is never coming back. Passengers rush past the “professionals” to reach the “app stand.”

It’s simple economics for the customer, but sad to consider how many livelihoods, once deemed secure, have been ruined. On the other hand, Lyft and Uber serve neighborhoods taxis will not. They offer flexible hours for part-time workers. And if you are being picked up on a cold or rainy day, you need not stand outside to wait.

Time marches on. Taxis were an industry ripe for disruption. Consider it done. (You can rate this story from 1-5 stars, 5 being the best. Tips are optional).

Tags Checker Cabs, Taxi cabs, Uber and Lyft

Categories childhood anxieties, Modern Society, Neighbors, perspective, Uncategorized

NEIGHBORS

September 30, 2014 //

NEIGHBORS When we moved to our previous home in New Jersey, we were excited to meet our new neighbors. At the time, we had two young children and a third on the way. Four of the five neighboring homes housed children under six and parents similar to us. We envisioned the kids growing up together like a non-related Kennedy clan, with touch football and basketball in the cul-de-sac, book groups and mahjong for the moms, golf for the dads. We’d have carpools and birthday parties for kids and adults alike, barbecues and even occasional dips in a hot tub. All the foregoing came to be, at least for a while. After several years, most of the children drifted apart. The adults, too, found other friends and interests more compelling and our little street became a place of occasional, friendly chats and waves through the car windows. We’d developed lives beyond our street, but we knew if we needed a cup of sugar or our newspaper picked up, we had people we could call. ***** And then “they” arrived, ominously dressed in black, like crows. Yes, one day, my wife, Katie looked out our bedroom window and saw two people, dressed all in black, trampling through our side lawn that backed up to thick woods. Before that day, we’d never thought about what was on the other side of the woods; we knew an old, frame house stood adjacent to a driveway leading to the street in the opposite direction from our house. The large property was pizza-slice-shaped, its point touching our cul-de-sac but then spreading back fifty yards through thick woods to where it opened up to the house site. Home alone at the time, Katie went out to investigate. “May I help you?” she asked. The couple turned and faced her sullenly. They appeared to be sizing her up. After a moment, the thick-muscled man in his late twenties said: “We’re walking our boundaries.” “You got a problem with that?” added the overweight woman beside him. “Well, actually,” said Katie, struggling to remain composed, “you’re on our property right now.” “The hell we are,” said the man. “I can go in and get the survey, if you’d like to see it,” said Katie. “Shit, let’s go,” said the woman. They turned back to the woods and began to walk away, but not before the woman turned and spat on the grass. “What a bitch,” she said, as they receded. “We should kill her,” said the man, just loud enough for Katie to hear. Katie ran into our house and dialed 911. “A pair of trespassers were just on my property and one threatened to kill me.” “I’ll send a police car ASAP,” assured the dispatcher. When the cruiser arrived moments later Katie explained what had happened. The young officer, whose last name was DiMaria, listened intently. “I’ll take care of it, ma’am,” he said, but Katie thought she detected a slight smile. “Thank you,” she said. “Will you let me know who they are when you know?” “Absolutely,” he said. Katie closed the door and called me at the office to tell me about the bizarre incident. While we were speaking, Officer DiMaria returned. Katie hung up, but related her conversation to me when I came home. “Nothing to fear,” he said. “What about the threat?” said Katie. “They’re your new neighbors, Vince and Carla Cucillo,” said the policeman. “I’ve known Vince a long time. He said he was just joking around. You must not have heard him clearly.” “I know exactly what I heard, and it was a threat,” she said. “And why were they all dressed in black?” “Oh,” said Officer DiMaria, smiling again. “Vince and Carla had a family funeral this morning. They’ll behave from now on. They’re not even moving in for a while. They just wanted to see where they come out on the cul-de-sac.” “They don’t come out on the cul-de-sac, according to our survey,” said Katie. “As to property lines, um, that’s up to the lawyers to figure out,” said the officer. “There’s nothing to figure out,” said Katie. “It’s clear, and that’s no way to meet neighbors. If they enter our property again, I’ll call the police again. You can tell your friends that.” Officer DiMaria shrugged. “Sure thing,” he said. ***** We didn’t encounter our new neighbors again for several months. Occasionally, unidentified cars drove slowly around our cul-de-sac and paused while their occupants appeared to stare at the woods. The limit of the Cucillos’ property had been marked with a pink ribbon in conjunction with their closing. None of our other neighbors had encountered the Cucillos and none seemed concerned. They didn’t take Katie’s story seriously. We tried to put the incident behind us but were still unsettled. Each time we drove into our driveway we faced the woods in their direction, saw the pink ribbon, and couldn’t help but think about who lived on the other side. One morning, we heard the sound of heavy machinery. When I drove by on the way to work, I saw the old house and garage on the Cucillo property being razed. By that evening, the lot on the other side of the woods was empty. “We still have a thick boundary of trees,” I said to Katie, seeking to reassure her as well as myself. “We’ll never have to deal with them.” “I hope not,” said Katie. Over the next several months, a frenzy of construction commenced and a massive red brick colonial emerged three stories high in our forested neighborhood of wood-framed contemporaries. “They don’t have taste,” we said, shaking our heads, along with most of the neighbors. “But they must have plenty of money.” Our next-door neighbor reportedly heard their family business was trash disposal. ***** As soon as the Cucillo family moved into their new home, activity increased in the woods between our properties. They had two sons who were about five and three. Our children were now seven, nine and fourteen. When they played in the cul-de-sac on their bikes, or shot baskets, the Cucillo boys watched through the woods. Occasionally, the boys tossed small stones or sticks and shouted something unintelligible. If anyone in the cul-de-sac moved in their direction, they scurried back towards their house. “I hate those kids,” said my youngest, Sam. “They’re so nasty,” said my daughter, Sarah. “The older one said he’s going to beat us up.” “Let him try. He’s like five years old,” scoffed Sam. “Their parents are awful, too,” I agreed. Considering their original greeting, their livelihood, and their unpleasant children, I occasionally referred to them as “the trash people.” I knew this was not enlightened parenting. Nonetheless, I found the term irresistible. When our kids repeated it, Katie and I both told them not to, but our discipline was somewhat half-hearted. ***** Incidents with the Cucillo children accumulated over the years. On Halloween, they vandalized our mailbox with eggs. Another time, they sprayed shaving cream on our cars. Frequently, we heard the boys screaming and fighting. Once, the older boy tied the younger one to a tree and left him wailing piteously for several hours. Another time they were jumping off tree limbs so high we were certain one would break his neck. We marveled that their parents didn’t come out to stop them. We thought it best to ignore the Cucillos and their children, and took comfort in the usual protection afforded by the thick line of trees. However, about three years after they’d arrived, the sound of tree removal awoke us one morning. It sounded as though we were in the midst of a logging operation. Several men with saws and grinders were assaulting our buffer. Knowing the town ordinance limited tree removal to six a year, Katie ran outside and towards the uproar. She waved her arms until a worker approached. “What are you doing?” she asked, noticing his tee shirt said “Cucillo Enterprises.” He shrugged: “Carla told us to cut ‘em down.” “You can’t just cut down the whole forest,” said Katie. “Carla’s afraid of trees,” he said. “What?” said Katie. “She thinks they’ve got monsters or something,” said the man. He laughed. Katie came back inside and called town hall, but it would be several hours before the building department answered their phone. By the time a local official arrived, only a thin line of trees marked the boundary between our properties. We learned that the Cucillos paid several hundred dollars in fines for their illegal cutting, but the harm was already done. Soon thereafter, Vince could be seen operating machinery in the now-treeless area. He used a backhoe to create several mounds for jumps and, by that afternoon, raced around the yard on an off-road vehicle along with several adult friends. The noise continued for hours. When the adults finally finished, the boys, now around eight and ten began racing on mopeds, their yelps and shrieks even louder than the roar of the engines. Again, Katie called town hall. “There’s nothing in the ordinance against it,” said a man in the building department. “You can file a noise complaint, if you want.” “What will that do?” asked Katie. “Well, if the officer comes around and hears too much noise, he’ll ask ‘em to stop,” said the official. “That’s it?” said Katie. “Yep. That’s about it,” said the man. As we feared, riding around the backyard on motorcycles and ATV’s became a weekend routine for the Cucillos. We complained several times to the town. Each time, the noise stopped for thirty minutes or an hour, and then resumed. We recognized they delighted in irritating us and there was nothing meaningful we could do. I found myself harboring awful thoughts, hoping someone would suffer a catastrophic injury. I’d like to think I would not actually be delighted if such a thing happened, but…. ***** We began to find places to go on weekends just to be away from the noise. We returned one day to see ladders beside one of the remaining tall trees. Cucillo Enterprises had constructed a massive tree house for the boys to play in. Fortunately, it was closer to our other neighbors’ driveway than to ours, but the boys would still loom over our cul-de-sac and threaten our privacy. Our next-door neighbors, Rich and his wife, Lucy, who had never found the Cucillos’ noise as bothersome as we did, went over to talk to them. They returned looking shell-shocked: “Those are the nastiest people I’ve ever met,” said Rich. “We’ve thought that for several years,” said Katie. “Vince says he can do whatever he wants,” said Rich. “Next, they’re going to build a pool,” said Liz. “Oh, no,” said Katie. “Imagine all their relatives and their kids hanging around all summer.” “Why can’t we ever anticipate the next disaster?” I said, sourly. When we went inside, Katie said: “We’ll never be able to sell this house if people see their house, their pool and their tree house when they enter our driveway.” Pondering that thought, I could only shake my head. ***** We hadn’t actually decided to move when we visited North Carolina for a long weekend away. But our children were nearly off to college and our house would seem empty without them. Between that and the Cucillos’ impending swimming pool, we were susceptible to falling in love with a warmer climate, a university town and a brand-new house. We contracted to buy on the spot. “How can you make a decision like that just on impulse?” asked a relative. “There’s more than just impulse behind it,” I assured her. Within six months, we had sold our house and arranged a move south. Our children readily agreed with our decision. ***** Now, we live in a gated community with an embarrassingly pretentious name, “The Governors Club.” There are rules and rules and rules. Motorcycles in the backyard? Laughable! A treehouse overlooking a neighbor’s home? Inconceivable. You can’t even plant a shrub without getting permission from the “Architectural Review Board.” Holiday lights can only be white. The color of our exterior paint is subject to approval. Such restrictions used to strike me as ludicrous and un-American. Our neighbor to the left is a widower who spends most of his time traveling. To our right are married university professors with whom we’ve exchanged words once, when the husband introduced himself to complain our lawn could not be cut after five o’clock. Across the street are three houses. On the left facing us resides a reclusive Chinese couple. Next to them are folks who spend most of their time at their second home in South Carolina. Finally, in the third house across from us, is an elderly pair we’ve never met, though they do occasionally wave when they trundle to their mailbox. Sounds awful, doesn’t it? Well, after living so close to “the trash people,” we love it.

Tags community rules, difficult neighbors, noise ordinances

Categories Modern Society, Neighbors, perspective

DON’T ASSUME

June 21, 2014 //

Don’t Assume

Making assumptions is problematic. A prime example was our next door neighbor where I was raised in West Philadelphia, Villy Leudig. He moved in with his wife, Aily when I was around seven in the early-1960’s; he still lived in the corner house, separated from my parents’ home by only a thin median of grass, when my parents moved away thirty years later.
My first awareness of the then-thirty-something couple was overhearing my father return from greeting them to tell my mother that our new neighbors were Stonians, and probably D.P.’s.
I didn’t know what either of those things were, but I had heard the latter term used by my father to describe occasional customers at his clothing store, and it didn’t seem to be a good thing.
“What’s a Stonian?” I asked my father at dinner that evening.
“Estonian,” he said, emphasizing the ‘E.’ “Our neighbors are from Estonia, a small country north of Germany,” he said.
“Is that a good country?” I asked.
“Well,” he hedged.
My father was usually straightforward in answering my questions, particularly if I showed interest in a business or political sort of subject. His hesitation was intriguing.
“Is it a bad country?” I asked.
“They were not helpful during World War II. The Nazi’s used Estonians as concentration camp guards; they looked perfectly blond, just the way they wanted people to be,” he explained.
I was wide-eyed with alarm.
“Are the new neighbors Nazi’s?” I asked.
“No, no, I’m sure they’re not,” he said. “They seem like nice people. But I think they’re D.P.’s.”
“What’s a D.P.?” I asked.
“A displaced person,” he said. “It means they didn’t have anywhere to go after the war.”
I was still confused, not sure what ‘displaced’ meant. If they had nowhere to go, maybe our new neighbors were bad people.
“Well, how do we know they didn’t work as guards?” I asked.
My father shrugged. “Those murderers melted back into Germany or Poland or went to South America. I don’t think they came to Philadelphia. You’ll be safe.”
He smiled.

I was not entirely satisfied with my father’s assurance. Not an outgoing child, I was reluctant to encounter our new neighbor, but I followed his movements from the safety of my second floor bedroom window. Sure enough, I observed, Villy looked exactly like a concentration camp guard from every World War II movie I’d seen. He was thin and of medium height, with light skin, a blond crew-cut and blue eyes. Aily, too, was a platinum blonde, with hair braided as though she were auditioning for a part in “The Sound of Music.”
During their first week next door, the couple were busy as bees reshaping their yard. While Aily created gardens and planted flowers, Villy undertook a large project to chop down brush and weeds from an area between our houses. He began to build a sitting area, with paving stones, an ornamental wood fence, and a barbecue pit.
Next, he re-tarred his detached garage roof and painted the trim around his house. Never had I seen such a blur of home-improvement activity, especially by a homeowner. Though our neighborhood was not wealthy, it was comfortable, and landscaping and repairs were rarely performed by anyone who wasn’t hired. Villy was the first neighbor I’d seen who cut his own grass.
I finally met Villy after several weeks, because my father said he was going next door on a hot Sunday afternoon (the only day he didn’t work at his store) to examine the on-going projects and offer Villy a cold beer.
“Why don’t you come along?” he said to me.
I didn’t question why my father chose to be sociable but I followed behind him to be introduced.
“Thanks, Lou,” Villy said, accepting the beer, with a vaguely European accent. “Is this, aaaaaaaaahhh, your son?”
“Yes,” said my father, and told him my name. “Say hello to Mr. Leudig,” he said to me.
“You can call me aaaaaaaahhh, Villy,” he said.
I’d never heard someone speak like that, with such a long hesitation. I looked carefully at him, trying to see if any evil lurked behind his kind smile. My father and Villy spoke for several more minutes while Villy showed us his improvements. I couldn’t ignore the speech impediment, but I detected nothing else amiss; Villy seemed like one of the nicest adults I’d met. My father had a new friend unlike any other friend he’d ever had — significantly younger, not Jewish, and not related to the men’s clothing business in any way.
In the next several years, most of what I knew about Villy came from overhearing my parents. I learned Villy and Aily spent most weekends at a home in New Jersey, where my parents assumed they had a large community of Estonian friends and relatives. I learned Villy was a traffic engineer for the City of Philadelphia and Aily was a pharmacist. I didn’t know what a “traffic” engineer was, but any sort of engineer sounded impressive to me. I assumed Villy designed bridges or roads; I assumed his household projects indicated a person of incredible technical know-how.

My childhood fear that Villy might have had something to do with concentration camps disappeared. By the time I went to college, Villy was an important, positive part of our lives. After my father retired in his late-70’s, he waited for Villy to come home from work like a pet waiting for his owner, so that he had a companion to share a drink and conversation. When I came home on school breaks, Villy and I played spirited ping-pong matches in our basement.
Villy offered advice and assistance on home-repair projects, like replacing toilet innards or repairing leaky faucets. Even though these tasks were basic, they were easily beyond the ability of my father or myself. Villy’s early burst of energy on his own house gave way to several curious attributes, namely: he never actually finished a project. Patio paving stones remained stacked up near the barbecue for decades, though the job could probably have been finished in a day; a porch he commenced screening-in within weeks of arrival remained mostly unscreened twenty years later; the garage that Villy had roofed and painted upon arrival became filled not with a car but with stacks of newspapers and boxes, from floor to ceiling. Villy, it turned out, was a hoarder.
We accepted Villy’s quirks in a friendly way because he was otherwise so decent and sympathetic. We learned that a traffic engineer was actually someone who did not construct things, but counted how many cars went past an intersection. Sometimes, Villy sat alone in his city-owned car for eight hours and monitored traffic flow at a stop sign, to determine if the sign needed to be moved a few feet in one direction or another. Still, the lack of professional status we’d assumed for Villy was no impediment to our affection for him.
The problem: when I came home from college or, later, visited my parents from the town where I worked, Villy’s frequent presence puttering in his yard presented a dilemma. Talking with him was torture. He rarely completed a sentence without an “aaaaaaahhh” and any effort to provide the missing word was counter-productive. For instance, if he said: “I’m going to get gas in the aaaaaaahhhh…” and you offered “car” he would begin again as though you hadn’t spoken: “I’m going, aaaaaaahhhh, to get gas in the aaaaaaaahhhh, car.”
I learned not to “assist” him, but there was still a significant disincentive to speak with Villy. He simply couldn’t converse “normally” and, if I had to be somewhere quickly, or just wanted to get inside the house, it was impossible to hasten the conversation. Every time I snuck into my house without saying hello and/or formulated the thought that I had to avoid Villy, I felt like a horrible person.
“How do you talk with Villy?” I asked my father once, when I was in my twenties.
“I’m used to it,” he said. “Plus, I’m never in a hurry.”
That was true. Since his retirement, my father viewed his leisurely conversations with Villy to be enjoyable, the longer the better. Little did my father suspect he was about to have more time with Villy. Late one evening, when I was visiting my parents, our doorbell rang, an extraordinary event. I was upstairs, and heard my mother rush to the door and greet Aily, who was crying hysterically. I couldn’t hear distinctly what they were saying but eventually understood that Villy, in his mid-fifties, had suffered a heart attack. The ambulance had just taken him to the hospital and Aily feared he wouldn’t survive. My mother comforted her at the kitchen table for an hour that seemed endless.

The next morning, my parents visited the hospital with Aily. Villy was stable despite a massive attack, but my parents returned home saddened not just by his physical condition. The vast Estonian community they assumed for the Leudig’s simply did not exist. They learned that Villy’s house in New Jersey was just a small cottage in the woods and, in fact, they knew almost no one there. Without suspecting it, my parents had become the Leudigs’ closest friends.
When Villy was discharged from a rehabilitation center after several weeks, he retired from his job on disability. He was home all day long, which was perfectly okay with my father. Villy, too, seemed satisfied to be finished with the traffic department and, other than his pledge, finally, to quit smoking, he seemed unaffected by his near-calamity.
I asked my father once: “Did you ever find out what Villy did during the war?”
“No,” he said. “I’ve never asked. And he’s never told me.”
Though hard to fathom, this sort of non-communication is not unheard of among men. In any event, I was pleased to know Villy was around. As my father approached eighty, his old friends from the clothing business dwindled due to deteriorating health, their inability to drive or, in many cases, death. Villy was available to talk or walk slowly around the block, or go out to get a sandwich.

When I married, at thirty, Villy and Aily were among the few non-relatives on my parents’ guest list. They drove two hours to the rehearsal dinner and I was happy to see them, though careful not to be cornered one-on-one by Villy. There were simply too many people to greet and details to attend to.
During the course of the meal, various of the sixty or so guests stood to offer toasts. Some were funny, some were sweet, and a couple were a little edgy. But the evening flowed without anxiety for me until, to my amazement, Villy rose from his seat across the room and tapped his glass.
“Oh, my,” I thought. I tapped Katie’s arm beside me and pointed: “Uh-oh,” I said.
For a long moment, after he had the attention of the entire room, Villy was silent. I feared he was frozen in some way that would become more memorable than any other aspect of the delightful event. The room fell completely silent. Another moment passed. Someone dropped a spoon. I heard a cough. Everyone waited expectantly. Only a few knew of his impediment. Several guests shifted in their seats. My heart pounded. Finally, Villy began to speak.
“I’m thrilled to be here this weekend to celebrate the wedding of two wonderful people,” he said, sounding like a professional public speaker. He held up his glass to us. “I’ve known Stuart and his family for over twenty years and consider them to be dear friends. I’ve battled Stuart in ping-pong and suffered with him over the Phillies. I’ve seen him grow up and go to college and become a lawyer and a man and I have just this to say: when Stuart and Katie slide down the bannister of life, may all the splinters be pointed in the right direction.”
With that, Villy concluded his toast amidst boisterous laughter and waved to us with a broad smile. All my fears were for naught. My negative assumption was wrong. I’m not sure who was more relieved and appreciative, me or him, but Villy had absolutely NAILED his toast.

Tags Estonia, Neighbors, speech impediments, wedding toast

Categories Coming of Age, Neighbors, perspective