For the longest time about 4 houses in a row right across my street were for sale. I was beginning to wonder if houses could sell in my neighborhood in this market, but after about 6 months one “For Sale” sign came down, and then another, and then one more, leaving only one house left for sale. That made me feel a little better until I met one of my new neighbors.
My first time meeting Floyd was when I came home one day, and found a big tree branch next to my mailbox as I was checking the mail. Floyd came out into the street to tell me a branch had fallen off of my tree and that it was in the road, and that he moved it into my yard for me. He extended his hand to shake mine, and I reached out to grab it and thank him for helping me out. After a quick shake, I tried to pull my hand back to my side, but he held onto it and wouldn’t let go. He started talking about other stuff, although I was having trouble figuring out what he was saying. It’s not that he can’t speak English, or that he has a thick accent or anything, it’s that he tends to talk in rhymes and riddles and he spells out words backwards and forwards and uses a letter of the alphabet to move onto a new subject. For a minute or two I found him entertaining and weird, but he continued to not let go of my hand, which was starting to bug me a bit. An invasion of my personal space to say the least. Finally I yanked my hand out from his, and said thank you and that I wanted to go inside and get out of my work clothes.
The second time I ran into Floyd was when I was cleaning out my garage this last fall. My neighborhood is rather famous to me in the respect that whenever I throw something away, I always take note of the time I put whatever broken unwanted piece of garbage on the street corner and see if it will last an hour before someone walks up or drives by and picks it up. I’ve thrown away dirty dog hair infested couches, a broken futon, broken chairs, broken TV sets… you name it, I’ve thrown it away and someone has decided they wanted it.
So this day I started with a broken clothes dryer… 5 minutes later it was loaded into someone’s truck despite the sign I taped to it saying “Broken”. Next came the four piece old sectional couch Wayne had given me years ago that was just sitting taking up space in my garage. On top of it I put a 20 year old small kid’s toy guitar with two strings. Floyd literally came running across the street after I had gotten the first sectional piece to the curb asking if he could have some of it. I said sure, and proceeded to wheel out the rest of it while he borrowed a neighbor’s car to come pick it up and move it. He also took the toy guitar. He came running again 20 minutes later when I started wheeling out a broken window AC unit. I didn’t even get half way up driveway before he was there asking to use my hand truck to take it home. He must have been sitting at his house looking out the window thinking to himself, “Damn, that white boy is throwing away some good stuff”. I’m sure the county trash collectors love my neighbors. Again he tried talking to me for a bit, but I didn’t really understand anything he was saying.
The third time I met my crazy neighbor was when I started getting disturbed. It was the night before my trip to Vegas, and Jeff was over for the night and we were drinking some beers in the living rooms. At 1am, I hear a loud bang on my door. Not a knock, it was like someone jumped into the door with their entire body. We both get up to check it out, and there’s Floyd on my front porch. I open the door, thinking he might need help or is in some trouble or something. He immediately starts talking about how he thinks we have cops living in the neighborhood, because he says a house with a bunch of illegal immigrants was busted at 5am the other day, and they were all deported. He says he thinks my big fat gay neighbors next door are cops, and I’m pretty sure he’s beginning to imply that I am a cop as well. At one point he extended his hand to shake mine, but remembering the last time he did that, I didn’t offer my hand. Can’t fool me twice with that trick. After I realize this guy is jacked up on something, and talking incoherently about nothing, I tell him it’s late, I have a flight in the morning, and a friend over and he should go home. He starts talking about how I am a great guitar player (he has never heard me play), and I ask him again to go home. He starts getting agitated and loud, so I say “Hey buddy, I’m here with a friend and it’s late and you need to go home now”. He says, “I’m not your buddy”. So I say, “Look friend, it’s 1am and I need to go”. He says, “I’m not your friend”. Jeff is now standing around the corner with a fire poker in case things get nasty. So I finally say, “Look guy, if your not my friend or buddy, then you need to get off my porch and go home”. He starts to say, “I’m not your guy”, and then I attempt to shut my front door quickly. He tried to push it back open as I was closing it, which scared me a little bit, but I got it closed and locked before he could get a good push in. He spent another 5 minutes yelling and screaming on my front porch, and looking through my window before he finally went away.
So a few weeks pass, and my folks come into town for Christmas and to stay with me a while their house is getting worked on. We are remodeling my bathrooms while they are here. Then one night we are hanging out watching TV, and I hear another loud thud on my door at around 10pm. I say, “Not again”, and get up to find Floyd on my porch again. I had already warned my parents about him, but I was hoping he would just stay away. He starts yelling and screaming about god knows what, and I didn’t open the door this time. I told him to leave right away, he didn’t. I told him when he tried to push my door open the other day, that I didn’t like that, and I didn’t want him coming over to my house anymore and to leave, and he refused. He said my garage door was open, and that he could “break into my house anytime he wanted to”. I started yelling. That booming loud yelling voice I inherited from my father for him to get the fuck off my porch or I was calling the cops. He just kept jabbering away about nothing, so I went and got the phone, and held it up to the window, and said again to leave or I will call the cops. He still wouldn’t go, so I held up 5 fingers, and counted down to zero, then dialed 911.As soon as he saw me dialing, he turned around and started walking down my driveway. As I was on the phone with the dispatcher, he came back again and started yelling and beating on my window.
It took the cops about 25 minutes to show up. I told them the story and then they went up to his house. They found a beer on his mailbox, and another neighbor came up and talked to them and told them the guy has been doing the same thing to him for a few weeks, and that he saw him take off walking down the street with another beer in his hand. The cops waited around for a bit, but he didn’t come back, so they left to see if they could find him walking down the street.
Less than a week later, I am driving home from work when my cell phone goes off. It’s Mom, and she says he has come back again and did the same thing to them. This really pissed me off. Mom called the cops, and when I got home, Floyd came running up to my driveway and started yelling about what I’ll never understand. I started yelling back that he better not step foot in my yard again, and that every time he does I’m calling the cops on him. My Dad heard the yelling, and came outside with his camera and started videotaping his drunken antics in case we needed some footage. Finally he went back over towards his house, and we went inside. It took the cops over an hour to show up this time. It was a woman named officer White. I told her the story about him banging on neighbors doors and harassing them, and the first thing she said was, “That boy is going to get hurt”. She asked for a description and if I knew where he was. I pointed out his house, and then I heard someone yelling down the street. He was walking back into the neighborhood and yelling at the guy on the corner while he passed his house. I said, “Well, I hear yelling, that’s probably him”. She said she would be right back, and she got in her car and squealed the tires running up to see what all the commotion was about.
She pulled up next to him and a buddy while they were turning into his driveway. She sat there talking to him for about 20 minutes. The only things I heard from a distance was something about him being on probation, and I heard his friend telling him, “She’s just asking you to go inside man, just go inside”!!! Well I guess he was giving her lip, cause she cuffed him and put him in the back of the car and came back down to my house for me to ID him. She asked if this was the guy who’s been banging on my door, and before I could say anything he says, “Yeah, that’s me”. She tells me she is talking him in for Public Intoxication, and that if I wanted to I could file a complaint at the courthouse for Criminal Trespass and once I did, if he bothered me again he could go to jail for a long time. She gave me his name and birth date, and then asked me to give him a verbal warning right in front of her which would suffice for now. She rolled down his window, and he started blabbering about would she please let him go. I tell him I don’t want him bothering me or my family anymore, that he is scaring me now, and I didn’t like when he tried to push my door back open. He denied ever doing that, and when I was done, she started to roll the window back up again. He was saying, “Wait wait wait, I need to tell him something please. She stopped the window for a second, and he starts to say, “Remember when the tree branch fell, and I helped you out…” She heard this and went ahead and closed the window and off they went to jail.
That was about a week ago now, and I haven’t seen Floyd since. I don’t know if he’s still in jail for busting probation on something or if he just got the message and is leaving us alone now. I’ve never called the cops on anyone before, and certainly never sent anyone to jail, but I can’t have someone threatening me or my parents while they are staying with me. Maybe he’s just lonely and gets wasted and can’t really talk to people. Maybe he’s just fucking loony. Regardless, I am doing house repairs as fast as I can, and I plan on getting the hell out of here as soon as possible. I used to never even lock my doors when I left the house, but now houses are being burglarized, cars are getting broke into, and we have a lunatic neighbor bothering everyone. There goes the neighborhood. |
