My Neighbor's Security

I know most of the people who live on my street - which is only somewhat true.  I know most of the people's vehicles who live on my street.
The people who live about a quarter mile away on a back lot just sold their house and moved recently.  I had never actually talked to them, but they drove a PT Cruiser.  From what I could see as they drove by, usually while I was walking one of the dogs, they were older - meaning they may have been around my age or maybe older.  They always smiled and waved.  But even people who probably would not like me smile and wave as they go by.

I don't remember the last time I woke up after the sun had risen, or even as the sun was rising.  I generally find that once I wake up, the best thing for me to do is just to get up - regardless of the time.  As much as it may pain the 16-year-old-me who has long since gone extinct, I am a morning person.
The first thing I do after I get up is put the dogs out.  My younger dog always hear me walking toward the dog room.  My older dog, deaf for years now, usually needs to be woken up.

At one time, we were the new neighbors on this street.  Now there are new neighbors at the house that just sold.  And three doors down in the other direction, new constructions is building another house.  It was early December when I moved into this house.  Coming from an old Victorian house down in the holler that is Main Street of the township, SO and I were enamored with the sunrises and sunsets.  A house out to the west - quite a ways away - has a floodlight of some kind.  This looks like a yellow sodium vapor light that is old enough that it may be starting to dim.  I can only see this light in the late fall through spring.  The house sits low, near the horizon so trees (and probably hateful honeysuckle) blocks the light from view at other times.
I've grown accustomed to that yellow light, but on first moving in, I hated it.  It spoiled otherwise stunning sunsets.  Looking to the west after dark, that yellow light remains defiling the sun's canvas.

I'm really not sure how old my older dog is as she was a rescue dog.  I was told that she was around 4 when I got her, but she was already starting to show some significant grey in the face.  When I told the vet the assumed age, he hesitated, raised an eyebrow, "Um, maybe.  Maybe five, or six."
She is the most aloof, yet affectionate dog I've ever had.  She can no longer go on anything but the shortest walks.  At times she can still jump on the furniture; other times she just puts her front paws up and looks at me.  She tends to look annoyed when I lift her onto the couch.  Aloof but affectionate.  I suspect I'll have the same level of obstinateness when I can no longer metaphorically jump on the couch.

When I let the dogs out first thing in the morning, I often pause to look up in the sky on clear mornings.  Living in a rural area, the stars shine brightly.  Even though I still want to visit an area with very low light pollution - I've never been able to see the painted swath of the Milky Way.  I have been lucky enough to have seen some fantastic meteors first thing in the morning.

The new people on the street have put up a shockingly bright security light that remains lit through the night.  Unlike the house to the west, this is not a dimming sodium vapor light, but appears to be some new-fangled bright white LED.  I have very quickly grown to detest that light.  I'm fearful if I ever meet these new neighbors, I'll instantly say something like, "Ah, the sons-a-bitches with that bright-ass light?"
I'm curious about the intentions and level of fear that necessitated such a bright light to be lit all night.  I suspect a similar reaction as to when someone new immigrant to this rural area complains about getting behind a trundling combine in the fall - what did you move to a rural area for?  Shouldn't darkness be a virtue of a rural area, just like farm equipment or cow poop is celebrated?  Or dogs barking?  Or sassafras trees being destroyed by whitetail bucks overcome with aggression in the fall?  Did these new neighbors come from a suburb, and bring with them the primordial fear of darkness that led primitive Homo Habilis to huddle by the safety of a fire at night?

I worry about my older dog.  She has been diagnosed with cancer and is approaching borrowed time.  Along with her hearing, her sense of smell is diminished to the point it is difficult at times to get her to eat.  But it doesn't take much to keep her happy.  Make sure she has water.  Give her a few treats per day.  Help her on the couch even if she groans about it.  And let her out every few hours.  The neighbor's lights don't seem to bother her at all.

Rules

Draco says:

1. All push pins will be clear, white or blue.  No push pins of other colors may be used.
2. Meat will consist of one chicken or one duck per person per week.  Venison may be substituted between October and December only.
3. All vehicles will be rear wheel drive.  For persons of sufficient means, all wheel drive may be substituted.
4. Lawn mowing will conclude each year by November 10.  Mowing the lawn after November 10 will result is immediate property loss.
5. No alcohol of any kind will be tolerated.
6. Teeth will be brushed both morning and evening, one tooth brush per individual.  Tooth brushes must never be shared.
7. Dolphins found in the Great Lakes must not be harmed.
8. All signatures will be done in blue or black ink.  Signatures in pencil or ink of any other color are invalid.
9. Only barbless hooks may be used in the taking of fish.  Nets maybe used in the landing of fish, but not as the primary means of fishing.
10. Management will write one memo detailing the previous three weeks of work every other week.  The memo will be one single-spaced page - no more, no less.
11. The thermostat will be set at 76 or above during times where cooling is needed, and at 65 or below when heating is needed.
12. The day's work may begin at any time.  However, lights must remain dimmed until after 6:00AM.  No office work is to be done on Saturday or Sunday.
13. Bread must contain whole wheat as the primary ingredient.
14. The combination of any citrus fruit or any part of any citrus fruit with any meat or fish is considered unfit for human consumption.
15. Dogs must not be allowed to sleep outside at night.  If a house has a dog, that house must have a minimum of two dogs.
16. All domiciles will be cleaned on every weekend.  The only exception is when a house is not occupied for the entirity of both Saturday and Sunday.  Cleaning procedures will be detailed separately.
17. File reconciliation will occur in January of each year.  Non-critical documents created prior to the previous year will be purged and shredded or burned.
18. Anytime Friday falls on the 13th of the month, it will be considered a paid holiday.

Dog Days

I don't believe any of the houses I grew up in had air conditioning.  A few of the apartment's I lived in during and after college had it, but I wasn't in those long enough for that to become the norm.
Admittedly, in Michigan where I grew up there are more cool nights than there is in a place like Tillman's Corner, Alabama, but summer's heat could still be oppressive with its evil friend humidity.  My parents always said the best thing to do was to put a fan in the window at night, either blowing cool air in, or warm air out overnight.  I always wanted the thing directly cooling me off.

We're in the midst of the dog days of summer.
dictionary.com defines the Dog Days as:
"The sultry part of the summer, supposed to occur during the period that Sirius, the Dog Star, rises at the same time as the sun: now often reckoned from July 3 to August 11."  Sultry...  Reckoned...
I've always been partial to the definition from the William Armstrong's Sounder, even if it is incorrect:
"the heat is so bad the dogs go mad"
I'm not sure if she's mad, but my dog clearly lets me know when the walk gets too long during the dog days.  She knows where the shady spots are along the road and what to do when she gets there.

This past week has had a brutal combination of heat and humidity.  Lows overnight were around 70.  And while highs were only around 90, humidity was almost tropical in nature with dew points above 70 degrees at time.  The hot and humid days can be ugly, but the nights can be near hateful - I'm reminded of the first few years after moving to Southern Ohio.  If my memory is correct, I moved into my house in February, with the huge opposing furnace heating and drying the air.  As that first winter transitioned to spring to summer, the area showed what we were in for.  The dog days of summer were unpleasant.  Getting home after work to a house that never felt like it dried out.  My parent's counsel to use fans in the windows was augmented by fans blowing over the bed.  The house sat in a holler, so humidity would often pool in the slightly cooler, lower air.  The effect was cooler soupy air was pushed around overnight only to be turned into hot soupy air during the day.  Overnight thunderstorms would bring a separate set of problems.
I tried to remain stoic about it, "I've never had air conditioning."
"Well, how was sleeping last night?" Janet asks, smugly.
I didn't admit it, but it was miserable.  At that time, I probably could have afforded a window air conditioner, but it would have been a stretch.  And I wasn't sure how much additional cost would come with actually using it.

Eventually, Bill gave me his old air conditioner as he got his central system fixed as preparation for selling his house.  This was an enormous window unit - thankfully the house had large windows.  It was loud and shaky and it seemed to want to give up overnight, but the slightly cooler and drier air it created in the evening allowed sleep to come less fitfully on most nights.  For some reason, paper wasps loved to make nests in that window air conditioner.
That free unit was eventually replaced with a far more efficient window air conditioner upstairs and a second larger unit downstairs.  I've always hated window air conditioners though.  No matter how well they are secured, much of the construction of modern units is plastic and they seem a desperately weak security risk.  In my case, the risk was probably minimal for the second floor, but despite doing what I could to secure it, the ground floor always made me nervous.  And since getting really good sealing around a window air conditioner isn't easy, I always assumed it was a convenient entry point for bugs as well as burglars.
At some point, discomfort and anxiety made getting central air conditioning a better solution.  Quite frankly, it didn't cost all that much and by getting a heat pump it helped with winter bills as well.  But as the house was well over 100 years old, with several retrofits from what was likely the original fireplace and coal furnace heating system, all cold air returns (that did anything) were on the first floor.  Some cooling reached the second story helped by a fan at the top of the stairs.  But a window unit was still needed upstairs might have been helpful on the worst days.  I didn't know it at the time, but I was only able to enjoy the central air conditioning for a couple years until I ended up moving.

I'd like to believe I'm not soft, but I'm quite sure returning to a lack of air conditioning would be painful.  Childhood tolerance is long gone.  Still, not only have I lived for most of my life without air conditioning, but people have for millennia.  If there was a drastic change in circumstances, I could try to resurrect the stoic tolerance of my ancestry.
As Mark Chesnutt sang in  1990:
"These old dog days of summer
Lord, I'll be glad when they're gone..."

Election Yard Signs are Stupid

As the grass dies and the leaves change, election yard signs spring up out of the ground.  Their crop value is quite limited however.

On my drive to work, there is one - and only one - yard sign for some faceless candidate who has the same last name as a coworker.  I feel compelled to steal this sign and put it in his cubicle.  This behavior, theft of yard signs, has been interpreted as quashing free speech and has been punished with legal ramifications, so I've resisted, despite the brief humor it would provide.  Humor in politics, or at work, is more important than legislation at this point.

As I've contemplated this yard sign, I'm struck by how stupid yard signs really are.  Has anyone ever driven down the road as a die hard Hillary Clinton supporter and seen a Donald Trump yard sign and said, "Gosh, that is a lovely Tudor, therefore I'm going to vote for Trump!"
Nope.
Not gonna happen.
Maybe signs help name recognition?  I don't buy that either.  If Helen Keller were still alive, even she would be sick of Clinton v. Trump by this point.

It appears there have been studies that attempted to measure the value of yard signs.  The result is, at best, not statistically significant and I'm not sure I even believe the trivial differences observed.

Yard signs are the equivalent of the CoExist bumper sticker on the Subaru Outback or the Buckmark on the Chevy Silverado.  They are merely decorative ornamentation that further defines an already defined individual.  While I may, or may not, have strong feelings on any given subject, I am frightened by anyone who can communicate their most deeply held beliefs in the space of a yard sign or bumper sticker.

Shortly after the yard sign by the candidate with the same last name as my coworker is another series of signs for two opposing candidates for some other office.  This is in a demilitarized zone between two interstates and immediately on either side of the sign for Candidate A, someone put signs for Candidate B.  I guess this is less illegal than removing Candidate A's sign?  I'm quite sure that whoever did this was probably quite smug about his or her attempt at political cleverness...

Election yard signs are stupid.

Thankfully, in a few days our "long national nightmare" will be over - or it will have just begun.
Winter winds will sweep away dead leaves and a few dead candidate yard signs.  Candidates should be personally responsible for every yard sign, to ensure it is disposed of promptly and appropriately.  This would give both the winners and losers something useful to do after the election.

The Ethereal Birthday Card Windfall

I need to state upfront, that I do not believe in "ghosts" or "spirits."
But like even the most rock-headed pragmatists, I've experienced things which I can't explain.

I bought my first house in college.  I was looking at what I was paying in rent for a rather dingy studio apartment and comparing that to what a mortgage payment would be on an inexpensive house in a dingy neighborhood.  I just could not rationalize the rent.
This was in the pre pre pre real estate meltdown days.  FHA programs still worked as intended - getting working people into homes that they really could afford without large down payments.

So I bought a house at a price that is less than the cost of some vehicles.  It was on a quiet one-way street, in a working-class neighborhood.  There were no houses on the other side of the street, since that was taken up by the interstate.  The interstate sat up a huge, steep hill, making the noise just a dull din in the background.  For a college kid - it was idyllic.

The house was affordable, and I loved spending time and what little money I had improving it.  Most rooms were painted; rough fixes done to allow the sale under FHA rules were remedied; carpeting was installed in many rooms.  The energy that seems to inherently come with a first house is enviable now.
Still, money was tight.  I made OK money working as a line mechanic and restoring cars, but the school year was tougher, with tuition due and often less work.  Multiple jobs while going to school sometimes made things hectic.

The kitchen in the house was fairly large for its age.  At some point in the house's history, it was lifted off its foundation, moved over several feet with a new basement dug under it.  This was done to give the property a driveway, and (as I've been led to believe) as an overreaction to fighting with the neighbors at the time about the property lines.  I believe the kitchen may have been enlarged at this same time.

The house had been owned by the same family for decades prior to my purchase.  The family originated in Eastern Europe with a last name that had too many consonants.  It was changed for most family members at some point to make it more pronounceable.  The last member to leave was Annie.  I bought the house from Annie's son.

Money was tighter than normal, with the end of the school semester approaching when I returned home on a late winter day.  Opening a drawer in the kitchen, sitting right on top was a birthday card to Annie.  I found this quite disconcerting as much time was spent cleaning before moving into the house.
I wasn't too disturbed, but did spend a few hours later that week removing all the drawers in the kitchen, looking under the cabinets and under every drawer; I had assumed the card was stuck under or behind a drawer somewhere.  I found nothing else.
Through that spring, several more old birthday cards appeared in the kitchen drawers!
I won't say this freaked me out, but it was far more than curious.

As that school year wound down, a final envelope showed up under the sink this time.  It contained a few more birthday cards and a massive wad of $2 bills.  Humidity and water from the sink had caused all the bills to stick together in some even-numbered cancerous mass.
This was a blessing as money was scary tight by that point, with relief in the form of the summer work season not yet providing.

I've previously written how old houses have a breathing history, and this was only one very pronounced example of that house.

I wedged the wad of bills into a blue folder, and took it to the bank.  A friendly teller and I spent a considerable amount of fun time separating the bills.  I'm not sure if the average bank teller today would have taken that same amount of time.  She returned the sum to me in uncirculated currency.

I used the cash to catch up on a few bills, buy food, and I think I also splurged on a really expensive bottle of beer - it was found money.  As I recall, I was not impressed with the beer.

I suppose it is hard to have any fear about a ghostly windfall, but the circumstances of it appearing after specifically looking for anything stuck in the kitchen drawers due to the birthday card(s) was a little unsettling.
Either way, it is still very hard to explain.

At some future Halloween, I'll have to tell what I found out about Annie dying - it wasn't at the hospital, and the unexplainable noise and door behavior shortly after moving in...

Terra Mediterranean Vegetable Chips

Actual Headlines
From USA Today:  Desperation Sets In While Homes Sit For Months With No Offers
From CNN:  Home Prices Post Record Decline
From The Atlantic: After An Ugly 2010, The Housing Market Won't Look Much Better In 2011

Selling my house was objectively not very prudent.  I tried to tell myself that buying at the bottom of the market made everything even out.  I can still make that argument, but I spent a frightening amount of stressful time in 2011 holding my breath.
Action does not always need to be prudent - or inaction for that matter.

I also told myself that as a small community, the area I was living in would be largely immune from the big-city and suburban housing market sickness.  Since I was so deeply involved in the buying and selling process, I started keeping track of the market in my township.  The chart below shows how much of a glut there really was even in that small community five years ago - and what a bad financial decision moving might have been.

With the market overloaded, and with many of them foreclosures, prices were seriously depressed.  If there was a bright spot, it was that as a house with improvements made under the assumption I would never move again, the house showed well compared to some of the foreclosures in the area.  Still, foreclosures in the area now are about 10% of what they were five years ago.

As expected, the harsh edges of real estate have softened over the last five years, but I still vividly recall the two lowest of the low points.
Taking care of two houses was very painful, and it seemed after every showing someone would leave a window or door unlocked.  On one afternoon with a threat of rain, I went to the house to check on it and mow the lawn.  I was done with the front yard as the smell of ozone preceeded a thunderstorm.  While trying to finish the back yard, the skies opened up with a deluge of water.  I only had a relatively small section in the back of the back yard to finish so I kept at it.  Then the lawn mower quit.  Kaput.  The unmowed square got relatively more expansive as I had to finish cutting the now sodden lawn with the push mower while light rain continued to linger.  I drove home wet, cold and defeated.
At one point, there were three realistic potential buyers showing interest.  Things were looking up as I was convinced one of these would work out, one of them had to.  Inability to buy during a divorce and inability to get financing in the new reality of lending forced two of the three out.  I was eating Terra Mediterranean Vegetable Chips when the Realtor called to say the third would not be buying the house due to family squabbles.  "So we're back to square one," was all I could say  after a long pause.

It is hard to find anything "good" about the selling process.  But in retrospect, it does sometimes help to bring some perspective to difficult situations, and perspective is needed all too often.

This too shall pass.

And it did.

Eventually the house was under contract.  I'm pretty sure that once that happens, the buying and selling process is designed to extract as much money out of the sale as possible.  I'm also pretty sure that once under contract, the real estate professionals push things through as hard as possible, while the finance and government bodies do everything possible to stop the sale.  Both buyer and seller are merely along for the ride at that point.  I'm 100% sure that I'm fine with how everything worked out.
The actual closing was suprisingly anticlimactic, it was dark outside once the closing was finished.  I went to the bank to deposit the closing settlement and the teller had to get it approved since it was such a large deposit.  I ate Kroger sushi (always disappointing) and grilled steak that night.  The sale was an amazing gift.

I have one picture of the house from around the time I bought it that helps me remember how great it was to move there.  Whether it is nostalgia or rose-colored glasses really doesn't matter.  I even miss aspects of the house - I miss living in an old victorian sometimes; I miss living in what might be considered a commmunity, albeit somewhat less frequently.  I have surprisingly few later pictures of the house.  That may not be an accident.
It no longer feels odd to drive by it.  I barely even wince when I see the basement light has been left on.  Someone else has lived there now for 1/3 as long as I had.  Allowing things to come to an end peacefully is a gift of getting older.

The sale of the old house was really the conclusion of the purchase of the new house one year previous.  Five years after that finality, I can say without hesitation that while not objectively prudent at the time, it remains one of the better decisions I've ever made ... even in a really bad housing market.

Derelict Houses

There is a house I frequently go past that has been vacant for a few years.  It is much newer than my house, larger and the property even has a pond.
From the little I know of its history, its build wasn't very rapid, likely due to the unique and customized log-cabin style architecture.  A couple years after occupancy, the couple that owned the house prepared for divorce and abandoned the property to the creditors.  While the cost may have been prohibitive for one of them to hold on to it, it was unfortunate that there did not even seem to be an attempt to sell it first.  Perhaps in the face of a personal and emotional failure, it was just one more thing which was too much.

Empty buildings make me sad - this isn't entirely complete.  Empty buildings make me sad as they deteriorate.
I'm not naive in this.  I realize that in some cases, the expense of keeping a structure outweighs its usefulness or cost to keep it up.  But empty houses take on an aura of depression, and this depression grows to an overwhelming pitch as buildings atrophy.

Houses develop a personality, a psyche, over time.  Walking into a freshly completed structure is probably intensely exciting to new home owners.  I've never lived that, and the feeling from other's new houses has always been one of intense sterility - akin to walking into a hospital, or furniture showroom.  The overwhelming smell of new paint and carpet; the saccharin look of all the unused fixtures; lack of scuff marks showing where people's lives have intersected with chairs and doors, with the floors and counters.  When redoing windows in my previous house, then well over 100 years old, I found mischievous etchings in the wood, archaeology and anthropology meet in real, every-day form.  The feeling was similar to when I found an old rifle with "Stoby" inscribed in the stock.

I love the feel of an old house.  The walls breath with its history.  Peoples lives are written in every nook of an old house.  And that is part of the reason why seeing houses fall derelict is so depressing.
Pausing in front of an old, empty house, it is possible to imagine all of life's little happinesses that may have happened there.  But as the house deteriorates, the happiness seems to slip away, leaving only life's evils.  I think that is why old empty buildings are so frequently described as "creepy" - the buildings lose their upbeat spirit, and what is left is fear, anger, and anxiety.

I took refuge from a sudden rainstorm once in an abandoned building.  The floor had given way in spots and there was overwhelming evidence of years of animals taking up residence.  I looked around and wondered what events had happened in the very spot I was standing.  As the rain pattered on the roof, and through it in some places, it almost sounded like voices of the past, a reminder that things weren't always like they are now.

I often wonder what transpired to transform a home into a shell no longer worthy enough to maintain, especially in and around areas that remain populated?  Fire and severe damage due to weather leave scars that explain catastrophic devastation.  Termites and other insects can render a building dangerous over time.  Poor maintenance, particularly as it pertains to weather fastness can be destructive.  Yet these issues build slowly over time.  Many empty properties are left more in a state of suspended animation.  They stand a testament to history, and as a reminder that at one time, the structure was once not only someone's house, but someone's new house.

Over the years it was empty, the house I frequently go past started to look more distressed.  Exterior wood needing treatment turned prematurely grey, and wooden clapboards began to fall out of place.  Vines started to grow ominously up the side, the chimney was left askew after a windstorm, and trees began standing sentry, blocking the front door.
That vacant log house has recently started to be cleaned up.  If other similar properties are any guide, it will go up for sale soon for a fraction of the value of other similar houses in the area, with the caveat that it is strictly sold as is.  The house will be set to be transformed back into a home, ready to create more history.

The Persistence of (Negative) Memory

The fireflies over the last few days have been really dramatic.  Letting the dogs out for the final time in the evening gives a brief glimpse into that free light show.  I get up early so they are often just finishing their lighted dance in the morning.
Like lots of other kids, I used to love to catch fireflies and keep them in a jar.  Many of them died overnight; watching them, even briefly, is a little more gratifying.

My neighbors had a party of sorts a few nights ago.  As people were showing up, one person in a Jeep showed up and parked askew on their lawn.  My mind jumped to living in the previous house several years ago, 20 feet away from 18 and 21 year old brothers.

A few years after we bought our previous house, Les moved out to move into his mother's house after partially renovating it.  He sold our neighboring house to two guys; 18 and 21 year old brothers who had recently received a sizable inheritance from their grandparents.
There were brief delusions that the two were mature; that 18 and 21 year old brothers won't act like 18 and 21 year olds.  That idea was shattered on the first weekend when the older brother (Old-T) had a party.  It went into the wee hours of the morning and was raucous enough that people down the street asked me the next day whether it was as bad as it sounded.
Hoping it was a one-time thing was misguided.  The next day Young-T was overheard on the phone calling friends for a party.  As it turned out, it was one of the quietest parties Yong-T ever had and that weekend was one of the few parties Old-T had.

Being below the legal drinking age, Young-T and his friends congregated at the house most weekends and often through the week.  Nobody ever wins neighbor wars, so I tried to be tolerant, but it was extremely difficult.  When they first moved in, Young-T had a red car with lots of cheap ground effects and a monster sub-woofer.  There is not enough insulation in the world to separate the noise it made while people were hootin' and hollerin' out in the yard.  I laughed a little as the ground effects were torn off the car in steep section of the driveway - I could only hope the sub-woofer would suffer a similar fate.
To be fair, when I would politely remind them that we lived within a few tens of feet from them, Young-T would make an attempt to quiet things down.
"You guys, we have to be as quiet as a mouse," Young-T would run around saying.
But, with copious amounts of alcohol, only so much could be done before inebriation took over.  The base was turned up, the screaming restarted, and who knows what else was going on.  The only hope was that sleep could be achieved before the cacophony really got going.

At the time and in retrospect, living next to them was pretty awful.  Old-T had a girlfriend and was almost never there, leaving the much less mature Young-T to exceed in degeneration.  The parties continued nearly year round.  Looking out the window at 2:00 AM and seeing a group of guys peeing in my back yard was never fun.  The occasional fights, junk strewn about, driving through my yard, all constant annoyance.  I think the noise actually bothered the neighbors across the street more as they called the cops often and even tried to get the township officials involved.

In time, the red car with the cheap plastic ground effects gave way to a black jeep.  Even after Young-T turned 21, the parties at home continued.  I think by this time, the juvenile behavior affected finances to the point the drinking in bars with regularity might have been prohibitive.  Degeneracy is hard to keep up as a full-time occupation.

Some time later, the Jeep was destroyed; I can only assume it was in a drunken accident.  We heard third hand that Young-T had moved back in with his parents, who had subsequently moved to Colorado - I can only assume what a life shock that must have been.  Later, I found a letter that had blown into my yard detailing the remaining (significant) cost of the Jeep that must be reimbursed to the finance company.  It was easy not to feel too bad for him; there was almost some poetic justice there.

It is approaching five years now that we've moved from that house.  Yet, when the Jeep appeared on the neighbor's lawn a few nights ago, I shuddered a bit- the persistent memory of the two boys.  After nearly five years living in this house, I knew the shudder was misplaced, but the memory is persistent.  Not only is this new house separated by orders of magnitude more space, but I've never heard a late night peep from any of the neighbors.

Some time after Young-T moved out, Old-T spent considerable effort cleaning up the house and sold it (for surprising amount more money).  Becky was a very quiet neighbor, but that is another story altogether.  The house is currently on the market again, but this time for less than the cost of Young-T's Jeep; sometimes life has sad outcomes.

The fireflies were out again last night, hopefully creating new persistent memories.  After letting the dogs out, I stood by the fence and watched the winking light all over the yard.  The broken clouds created brief glimpses of stars that mimicked the fireflies and the air was unbelievably still and calm.  Even the beagles seemed to try to be quiet.
It is likely that with more time, reflection will make living next to 18 and 21 year old brothers seem better or worse than it really was.  All memories are grossly flawed.
With the help of quiet nights and winking fireflies, the persistence can be destroyed to be replaced by a new set of memories.