My husband and I have been together for eleventy billion years and have always, in every place we’ve ever lived, had delightfully insane neighbors.
When we lived in the upstairs apartment of a duplex as young unmarrieds in a small college town, our downstairs neighbor was a saxophone professor who would practice at all hours (it got old but he was really good). Then we moved a few streets away to the downstairs apartment of a duplex where our upstairs neighbors were a retired politics professor and his wife. They were German by birth but had lived for years in Paraguay as members of the Bruderhof and had retained a dreamy, hippie-ish, not entirely grounded perspective on how to move through the world. The first time in my life I ever had to call 911 was the Halloween when they decorated their front windowsill with candles and set their curtains on fire. Kudos to the pint-sized trick-or-treater who noticed the flames shooting out.
I came home from work one spring day to find that the two of them had pitched a tent on our minuscule front lawn and were lying in it headfirst with their feet—his in New Balance walking shoes, hers in Birkenstocks with cozy striped wool socks—sticking out. When I asked later what they were doing, she told me in her somber, earnest German accent, “ve vere lying on the earth.” He was taciturn and distant in the way that academics often are when they are not around other academics, but she was bright-eyed and talkative, with sparkling blue eyes and a lovely, wrinkled, gentle face. She would chat with me on our shared front stoop about her many health issues and the various alternative-medicine practitioners she consulted about them, one of whom told her that all her problems were due to the fact that she was allergic to her own blood. “Well, that…can’t be good?” I ventured. “It is not,” she agreed, as cheerfully as her German accent would allow.
Aside from the saxophone professor, our loudest neighbor was Moses, a giant Schnauzer who was fiercely protective of his two moms and barked incessantly at the birds to keep them safe. Our current neighbor is Walter, a human who is a retired cop (we think? it’s a little unclear), worked part-time as a bouncer before COVID, and until some recent health problems would dress in jeans and a sleeveless leather vest with no shirt underneath whether it was 90 degrees or ten below. There were motorcycles involved. We share a very prolific blackberry bush between our yards, and at some point every summer he leans over our fence (usually with a lit cigarette dangling out of his mouth until a few years ago when he finally quit) and hands me a jar of his homemade blackberry preserves, which are delicious.
But our favorite, of all them, was Peg.
When we first moved to our current city, Peg lived next door in the house she had lived in her entire life. She was in her eighties, had been a widow for decades, and was the grumpiest person you ever met. She yelled at everyone for no reason and cursed like a sailor. We adored her.
Early on, Peg decided that my husband's name was Frank (it's not) and that my name was Emma (it's not). WHATCHA MAKIN’ FOR SUPPER EMMA she would yell at me from her front porch, not waiting for the answer before stomping out and lecturing me on how to cook potatoes. C’MERE FRANK she would yell at my husband and then berate him about the weeds, her crumbling stoop, the guy from down the street who insisted on parking right in front of her house goddammit. One time my husband did some yard work for her and she wrote us a check for $10, made out to “Frank and Emma” (no last name) in scratchy old-lady cursive. We still have it on our refrigerator.
She also decided that all my husband's friends were named Frank, which was hilarious and confusing.
One day when we were out in the yard "chatting" with her (Peg yelling about something, us nodding and smiling), a young couple from her church came by to visit her. She yelled OPE IT'S JOE AND SUSAN FROM CHURCH and introduced us as Frank and Emma. We were still outside when Joe and Susan came out of the house, and we said "it's so nice of you to visit Peg, but we should tell you that our names aren't really Frank and Emma."
They laughed and said "well, yeah, our names aren't really Joe and Susan."
Peg died not long after that, but I think about her whenever I look at that check on our refrigerator.
I was probably more excited than I should have been when I saw the check from Liberty State Bank. My favorite bank, ever.
Great story...
I remember when I was little, my parents hired a carpenter, who insisted on being called by a completely different name than his given name.
It was, oddly, my father's unusual name.
It was a chaotic few weeks.