Reflections on Country Neighbors

Not many people live on my stretch of road. It took me a long time to know the other people who live in the houses strewn along this narrow road because my own house sits back a lane. It's pretty isolated and private back here, which I like, but for many years I did not feel a sense of "neighborhood". 

 Since we have to drive to get everywhere we want to go, people mostly just wave "hello" to each other as we pass one another in our cars. There's no taking a break from work to talk to a neighbor across the fence like the poet Robert Frost so often depicted in his poems about country life.


Which I think is pretty sad, really, but eventually I got to know people.

Like any neighborhood, mine has its "characters", the few quirky people who make things interesting.

The man in the picture is one such "quirk" (and I say that in a fond manner).

I don't know much about him other than he lives alone in an underground house and never mows his property, he lets  his horse graze and do its thing.

He patrols the road several times a day, picking up aluminum cans. A few times last winter I found him walking into town on the highway, very unusual (and dangerous). In giving him lifts, I began to think that maybe he is in the first stages of dementia and talked to Jim about it.


Jim did some investigating and found out that my hunch is true. Our neighbor had his "wheels" taken from him because of his condition. His brother checks in on him daily and takes him places, so I haven't seen him on the highway lately, a good thing.


But it is no surprise to still see him walking along the road. What *did* surprise me yesterday is that he was not picking up cans, but whacking the bejeezus out of a dandelion.

I stopped my car to have a little chat with him, to ask how he's doing..how is his horse, and whatnot.

This is just small talk for most of us, but it means a lot to a lonely person whose brain is changing its think patterns.

The smile on his face as we were talking was more than enough payment for taking 5 minutes from my day.

"So.." I asked, "what's up with the dandelions?"

"Oh, I hate these things!!!!" he replied as he moved away from the one he had beaten to a pulp and started pummeling another innocent yellow "weed".

"Well, I see you have your day's work cut out for you, so I'll let you to it." He did not seem overwhelmed when he looked at the endless supplies of dandelions, in fact, his smile seemed serene...like this was his purpose and it was not going away anytime soon.


His behaviour gave me food for thought. This is what my mind has been chewing on...are people wired to have occupations? For instance, are we similar to bees in our genetic make up, that we have to have a purpose, a "something to do"?


For my neighbor, it seems like his brain has decided that his new occupation is killing dandelions. An odd choice, I think, because of the wide array of weeds and grasses that he has lived with for so long. I mean, wouldn't you think that bright yellow flowers would be welcome in his "meadow" of a yard?

Maybe they are. Maybe he's angry with the ones that grow in the ditches for leaving home.

This is what I do know. My neighbors are scattered and mostly aloof, but they are *my* neighbors and I care about them. Several of us are keeping an eye on our Dandelion Slayer, just to make sure that he stays safe.

And, really, the entertainment he provides is priceless....gives us something to talk about other than the weather. :)

As an after-thought, I snapped this pic of him from the car door mirror, to help me remember that day, our conversation, and to remember that the things that give us purpose also give us delight.

Marcheta *and like a good neighbor...