This is a photo of 455 North Broadway in Yonkers. This complex is a series of very roomy town homes and I spent about ten years there. For the most part, these were good times. For a while, I had very good friends living two doors away. All was pleasant.
Until the very last year.
Okay, the way the town homes were laid out, I shared a front porch and stairway with the unit on the other side of me. We also shared the same terrace in the back. The "way too close" neighbors for most of this time were a divorced woman and two wayward teenage kids. Mom must have been getting her groove on, because she disappeared for whole weekends at a time. Leaving the two pre-sixteen-year-olds to fend for themselves.
Yes, noise ensued frequently.
And, yes, the police were called frequently.
By yours truly.
One such violation of trust really exploded on these two brats. When Mom returned from her weekend between the sheets with whatever boyfriend she had at the time, she beat the kids up.
Frequently.
I lived through that noise and I refrained from calling the police this time around. I was having too much fun listening to these two dummies get what was coming to them.
Eventually, these shitheads moved out and I soon would be longing for their return. Because, the new tenants turned out to be....
Hillbillies.
No, not the Jed Clampett kind. These were real slobs from down South. An older Black couple and there were a couple of kids attached. Who they belonged to is beyond me? But, at times, there were so many goofballs going in and out of the apartment that it may have been doubling for the Yonkers branch of HUD.
Okay, the older folks were nice enough. Very pleasant and folksy. They came off like a couple of wise crackin' characters on a 1973 Norman Lear sitcom. The only thing missing was the regular utterance of "dyn-o-mite." My attitude was that, as long as they left me alone, I would join in with the reciprocal treatment and we could all co-exist amicably.
Until one summer's day when I came home from work. To find, carefully laid out on our shared front porch, squirrel pelts.
I repeat.
Squirrel pelts.
What the fuck????
Big Momma came out as I surveyed the daily kill. I spoke the innocent question that just screamed to be asked. What the hell is this?
"Oh, my husband went huntin'."
No fooling.
"He got some squirrel."
I can see that. And you're going to be using these skins to make what?
"Oh, they have to dry in the sun before you can do anything with them."
Uh-huh.
I thought about my address. I lived in a relatively urban metropolis. All of a sudden, I was having a conversation that usually takes place somewhere in the Ozarks.
With images of squirrel fur in my mind, I went inside to have dinner. Or I looked at it before I threw up the last five meals that I had ingested.
And then I wondered...
Where was the rest of the squirrel, um, innards?
Later that night, I had retired to my bedroom upstairs. Suddenly, I smelled something cooking on the back terrace of my neighbor's.
Oh, no. Grilling.
I poked my head out of the window. Big Papa was flipping some meat on his barbecue. Once again, I spoke the innocent question that just screamed to be asked. What the hell is that???
"Squirrel."
Kill me now.
"You want some. It's gooooooood!"
He smacked his lips. I slammed my window shut.
Suddenly, I was an actively interested buyer in the real estate market. Looking to purchase any apartment miles away from the charter franchise of "Squirrel Delight."
Just to show you that neighborly hell can be universal, our next tale takes place 3000 miles away. At the apartment complex shown above on Clark Drive, which is on the cusp of the Beverly Hills city limits. My writing partner and I roomed there for about a year when we first migrated to Los Angeles. Almost as soon as we got there, the owners made plans to switch from rental status to condos, which were incredibly unaffordable. No worries. The apartment itself wasn't that great.
And the neighbors downstairs definitely sucked.
Once again, I found myself in proximity to a divorced mother with two teenage brats. And Mom left virtually every weekend to have, er, her pipes cleaned.
Now, our front door overlooked the pool area. The dysfunctional bunch was directly below us and their unit was essentially next to the pool. When Mommy would leave for the entire weekend to run off with her boyfriend, the two urchins took the opportunity to have night-long slumber parties every Friday and Saturday nights. We'd pound on the floor to no avail. It was extremely frustrating. This went on for several months.
So, you can imagine my anger one Sunday night when I dropped a can of tomatoes on the kitchen floor. Two minutes later, there is a knock on the door from Mommy Downstairs.
"Could you please keep the noise down?"
Huh?
She left so quickly that I had no chance to respond. But, my writing partner had plenty to say when he got home several hours later and heard my story.
"We'll fix her ass."
Two days later, my roommate had to be working till 3AM. When I walked out of my bedroom to go to work in the morning, he had pinned a note to my door.
"On your way out, go downstairs and see what I did."
In the middle of the night, he had taken every piece of pool furniture and stacked it up against their front door. The way it was all positioned, it would come crashing into their apartment as soon as they opened the front door. Neither of us had to be there when it happened. We could imagine the disaster. And that's all we needed.
And, apparently, that's all they needed. They moved out one month later.
Dinner last night: Nachos.
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