Neighborly

PHOTOS: Taken on my bike ride yesterday.

THE LULU CHRONICLES

LuLu-ism: #33: You know you've got a good neighbor when you can borrow a cup of sugar and he'll snowplow your driveway just for the fun of it.

Yesterday morning, LuLu and I were on a mission. We are having a Harvest party at our house and I needed to get invitations out to our neighbors. This party is going to be a little slice of Americana. The festivities include a pumpkin carving contest, bobbing for apples (apples generously supplied by my neighbor down the road with an orchard), a hayride through a haunted forest (compliments of another neighbor with his John Deere, hay wagon and the hours it took to decorate their back forty with ghosts and goblins), a washer tournament (a lot like a game of horseshoes, but with those little metal donut thingys instead), croquet, three-legged races and pudgy pies—it doesn’t get anymore autumn than this, folks.

So, LuLu and I rode down our road and dropped off invitations. It was a great way to visit with my neighbors, get some exercise, and take in all the nuances’ of fall. I love living in the country! As I rode it was like I was inhaling an earthy mint.

It was fun riding my bike up driveways I normally only see from the road. It felt a little trespass-y parking LuLu near the front doors of houses I rarely visit. I know some neighbors better than others of course, and a couple of them are complete strangers. I’m hoping this party will knock down some of those fences that keep us out of bounds from each other. It’s not like in the old days where I was raised. Every neighbor was a friend and a tattletale as far as I was concerned. I could do something slightly naughty two blocks over and before I’d get home, my mom would be waiting with her arms crossed and with that look that told me I was dead meat or I was going to be when my dad got home. Now days, if I ran across a neighbor in the grocery store, there’s a good chance I probably wouldn’t recognize them. My only view of most of my neighbors is through our windshield as we pass and wave.

I want to claim some of those old neighborly ways back. Good people live on our road—hard working, kind, generous, family folks. We’re just too busy to be neighborly. Maybe dunking our heads together in a wash bucket full of Macintosh apples will change that a bit. It can’t hurt, right?

Do something neighborly today.

Later,

deb