About a month ago we noticed our next-door neighbor’s grass was a little long. I loved it simply because it made our yard look so tidy. In fact, their whole house makes ours look sharp. I’d been a little concerned because they’d painted it one day while I was at work, but I stepped back and determined I did not have to paint my house to keep up.
The next week, the grass was longer.
After a month, after the grass thinned out and went to seed, we got some of their mail. I knocked, no answer. I went to leave the letter in their mailbox and noticed their cunning little decorative mailbox was gone.
“Gary, I think our neighbors are gone.”
Gary speculated there might be dead bodies in the house.
“No, unless they were killed for their mailbox. That’s gone too.”
Gary speculated they may have been evicted.
“But, we would have seen all their belongings on the front yard.” (I think I was thirty before I learned the significance of furniture on the front lawn. Until then I just assumed a cheating boyfriend had been thrown out.)
Today Gary tracked down the across-the-street neighbors and quizzed them. Not an eviction, not a foreclosure, but a reaction to the inevitable. They’d been warned by the bank, and they decided to “just let the bank have the house.” Oddly, they painted it first.
Gary had to be warned that the neighbors had made a pact not to mow that lawn, ever. It’s cool with me.