Neighbours – part one

October 25, 2012 by
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Fanta on the fence

Fanta on the fence post

Ever since the existence of humans there have been neighbours.  Even the first loose gatherings of nomads had neighbours.  Back in those primitive times, neighbourly relations were just as fraught as they are in the modern era.

 

Those hunter-gatherers of centuries ago fought with their neighbours, violent differences over water, food and land.

 

As humans evolved, tribes developed into small communities.  Those communities grew into villages before centralising, thanks to technology, into towns and cities.

 

In the modern age our neighbours live next door, above us or below us.  They live how they want to live.  Everyone is entitled to do that, because living is an ideal.

 

Occasionally our neighbours don’t live how we want them to live.

 

We of the modern age are no different from the very first tribes that roamed the earth.  Occasionally there are violent differences with our neighbours.  The reasons for the fight are no longer about water, food or land.

 

Rather, they’re modern problems, noise, disrespect and poor behaviour.

 

Interaction with neighbours is unavoidable, even if it is nothing more than a forced wave once a month.  We’d all love to live next door to our mates.  Instead we get a diverse gathering of people.

 

If the neighbours are friendly, it’s a bonus.  There’s plenty of neighbours who aren’t, and they can make life hell…

 

 

Lou – Oak Park, Victoria

 

Lou was born in Italy during the Second World War.   When that fight was over he immigrated to Australia.  Like many immigrants, English was his second language.  He spoke it in caricature, a heavy accent in high-pitch.

 

A mechanic, all Lou ever seemed to wear was dirty overalls.  I never saw him in anything else, even late on the weekends.  In summer he was fond of white wife-beater singlets.

 

Lou had two daughters who were quiet at Oak Park Primary school and quiet at home.  Perhaps if he had boys things might’ve been different, because he didn’t understand or tolerate football or cricket.  Any balls that went over his fence never came back.

 

He didn’t like noise either, of any kind.

 

Mostly, it seemed Lou didn’t like children.

 

I am too young to remember Lou being friendly but it wasn’t always bad beyond the fence.

In the mid seventies, my father Bill offered assistance when Lou was putting the V8 back into his Monaro.  He’d removed it because there was a noise he could hear.  After taking the V8 apart he couldn’t find a problem.

 

When the motor was reinserted and working again, the noise remained. 

 

Years later, my father Bill wondered about Lou’s mechanical skills.  ‘The noise was in the gearbox and he took the engine out,’ Bill said.  ‘And he was a mechanic.’

 

A few years later, an incident in Lou’s driveway ended the conversation.  Bill was hammering loose pailings back into the rails.  He was in Lou’s driveway.  Lou didn’t like that.

 

As he walked down the driveway, his right hand was wrapped around a screwdriver, which he held like sword.  He suggested Bill should ask for permission to enter his property.

 

Bill hammered the last pailing on.  ‘Don’t ever fucking talk to me again,’ he said.

 

‘Bill,’ Lou called after him.  ‘Bill.’

 

‘Get fucked,’ Bill said.

 

A week later, Lou trimmed the overhanging branches and threw everything into our yard.  I remember Bill wanting to go next door to tell him not to do it again.

 

‘I’ll tell him if he wants the trees trimmed to talk to me,’ Bill said at the time.  ‘I’ll put the trailer in his driveway and we’ll do it together.’

 

Bill and Lou never had that chat. 

 

By summer 1982, the night we returned from a week away in Warrnambool the relationship deteriorated badly.  My siblings were outside at dusk, bouncing on the trampoline.  Nick was five, Juliette was ten and Sam was 14.  Trampolines are fun.  There might’ve been some kid noise. 

 

Lou came out from his house, stood on his porch and stared.  My siblings rushed inside to tell Bill.  I went outside and bounced on the trampoline. 

 

Lou was still there, arms folded, watching from his porch.  Bill came outside, to see for himself.

 

Moments later Lou put his ladder on the fence and stepped up a few rungs.  The exchange was furious.  Through the maelstrom I heard Bill use various words for the first time. 

 

Threats were made.  Unfortunately, Lou threatened the kids.  Bill threatened Lou, you touch my fucking kids…

 

It was frightening.  Patsy called Bill inside and called the police. 

 

After hanging up Patsy surrounded Bill with his kids, preventing him from wandering next door for a chat.  When the cops came they talked to Lou for a long time before wandering to our house.

 

‘His wife has a headache,’ one of the cops said.  ‘That’s why he wanted quiet.’

 

Bill went through a brief history of neighbourly relations.  The cops assured us there would be no further trouble.

 

1982 was also the year Bill built a small pool down the side of our house.  The pool was in a great location, next to the bedroom I shared with Nick and beside Lou’s front yard.

 

Space was tight.  Bill had to dig three struts about six inches into Lou’s yard, along the retaining wall.  Not long after the pool was built, Lou concreted down that section of the fence and covered the offending struts.

 

Naturally Lou complained about the noise we made when in the pool.

 

By 1983, Bill had extended the height of the fence so Lou couldn’t see us.  In response, Lou lined his front yard with barbed wire which made no sense given anyone could walk up his driveway.

 

The alternate fences ensured a truce of sorts.  Bill and Lou never spoke again.

 

Summer, 1988, I was under the clothesline, wearing in a new cricket bat by hitting a ball in a stocking.  Lou’s wife (I can’t remember her name) called out to me from the fence and asked me to come over.

 

‘Please, come.’ She said.

 

I went.  She met me at the driveway, beckoning.  ‘Come, come,’ she said. 

 

Given our history, I moved slowly and carefully, worried that Lou was there.  Only once had I ever been inside Lou’s house.  I was wary as we went up the driveway to the back of the house.  She held the door open for me then pointed to the laundry. 

 

A white, plastic washing basket sat on the floor next to the washing machine.  The basket was filled with tennis balls, two footballs, three softballs and a billiard ball. 

 

‘These are yours,’ she said. ‘Take them.’

 

I looked at her, simultaneously stunned by her gesture and the amount of balls we had lost.

 

‘Quickly,’ she said.

 

I went to the fence, tipped the balls into our yard and gave her the basket.  After saying thanks I went home without asking why she gave the balls back.  We never talked again.

 

For months afterward I wondered how a man could hoard such an assortment all those years, and why he wanted to.  I hoped Lou didn’t give his wife any grief for giving the balls back.

Possession is nine-tenths of the law, but what Lou did was spiteful.  My parents spent a lot of money on balls over the years.  A lot of them went over the fence.  All he had to do was throw them back.

 

Instead, he kept them in a washing basket in the laundry.    

 

Lou’s attitude to kids, and there were a lot in Jacaranda Street, made no sense.  His daughters were a similar in age to Sam, my older sister.  Surely they must’ve made noise as they grew up.  They must’ve bought friends home who made some sort of noise.

 

In the early nineties, long after we’d moved to Queensland, the old fence that’d stood for eight years was about to fall over.  Lou tore it down and removed the concrete he’d layed a decade earlier.

 

He discovered those three pool struts were inches inside his yard.  He called the council and had the land surveyed.

 

The new owners of our old house called Bill.  He said it was all approved by the council, an existing structure, he said.

 

The council ruled in favour of Lou, forcing the new owners of our old house to remove the pool.

 

It proved Lou didn’t just hate the Watsons.  He hated all neighbours equally.

 

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Comments

One Comment on Neighbours – part one

  1. billy on Fri, 26th Oct 2012 9:44 am
  2. you forgot about the water running off the garage roof

    he had some deep secrets and i think they included abuse





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