The Neighbors, cont.

Whew summer, how you keep me busy! Okay, not that busy, but it's warm enough for me to be outside rather than lazing around too much. I did also just finish book #21, in case you were keeping track of my reading goals for the year.

Anyway, I promised more crazy neighborhood stories, and so here they are.

First up, the hammer story. A few weeks back I was in the house with the windows open to enjoy the nice breeze. Suddenly I heard lots of yelling out front, some woman was yelling about getting her stuff back.

I look out front and a two-door sporty type car is sitting in front of my house with two guys inside of it. A woman is standing in front of it yelling her head off about how she wants her stuff back. The passenger door is slightly open, so she grabs it and then they decide to put it in reverse. Bad move. She holds onto to the door and then occurs a scene much like the car door scene from the movie "Tommy Boy" - it bends in the wrong direction as they back the car up. It made a lovely noise.

At that point a guy who was standing with the yelling woman jumps into the passenger seat and starts just wailing away on the guy sitting there. That's when I ran to call the cops. After hanging up I heard some glass shattering outside. That worried me because this whole spectacle was happening right next to my car.

Fortunately it wasn't my car, but unfortunately it was the same sports car under attack before. Its windshield was now shattered, as was its passenger side window. The woman and her accomplice then promptly jumped into their car and sped off, leaving the two guys in the sports car sitting in the middle of the intersection with a shattered vehicle.

The guys were very suspect and the neighbors informed me that they're some neighborhood druggies they often see around. As we waited for the cops to show up we watched these two skinny dudes twitch around and remove some things from their car. No idea what they removed, but I have a feeling it was drugs - or perhaps the items the woman had accused them of stealing.

The cops showed up and chatted with the victims. As it turns out, the part I had missed was the guy attacker coming after them with a hammer and then the girl smashing their car with the hammer and hitting the guy a few times with the hammer, too. Hooray.

One of the cops then makes his way up my steps to ask me if I saw what happened. As I start explaining what I saw, the woman who did it all shows up behind the cop. And this is why the neighborhood happenings make me laugh:

"Hold on, I'm here - I did it and let me tell you why!!" she yells.

She then promptly admits to doing it all. The reason? She lives across the street from the guy and says he stole stuff from inside her car. A GPS system and some other stuff.

"He has it all in his car right now, you can search it!" she yells.

Well of course the two twitchy drug addicts yell back, "Nuh uh, you can search the car right now. Ain't nothin' in it!"

The one woman cop on the scene has had enough. You can tell she's probably had to deal with these idiots before.

"Okay okay, wait a minute here, you just admitted to doing all this?" the cop yells.

"Yes," the woman says, and then she starts trying to retell the whole story.

"STOP IT, THAT'S IT!" the cop yells. "I'VE HAD ENOUGH OF YOU PEOPLE."

She then slaps the cuff on the woman and throws her in the cruiser. Some more statements are taken, the same cop threatens to throw the two druggies into jail, too, if they don't shut up. She wasn't taking shit from anyone.

Ah, Baltimore.

I'll tell you, the woman and her accomplice didn't look much like addicts. She looked normal, except for the hammer-wielding anger. Thing is, though, I believed her more than I believed the druggies. I've been in her shoes - I've had people steal from me. So I kind of felt for her. Of course I don't advocate taking a hammer to anyone or to their car, but still, I know how she feels.

Oh, and I think it was related to our crackhead family neighbors because this woman and those guys lived on another street. And yet I believe the woman was trying to track them down and came to the drug house on our street to see if she could find them. Then they showed up. I'm not positive on that, but I don't know why else she was on our street.

From there another week went by before our next episode of COPS. Amy's never around for these events, unfortunately, I'm the one who gets to experience it all. I think she's now started to expect me to say, "Guess what you missed tonight!" each time she gets home.

Anyway, about a week goes by after The Hammer Incident. Again, the windows are open for a nice breeze. Suddenly I hear a giant explosion out back. Tuesday the Cat jumps about 10 feet in the air and shoots upstairs to hide.

I walk to the back door and open it just in time to see some guys run out the back of the crackhead family house, light something in their backyard and then run back inside.

BOOM! A huge firework blows up at ground level - and I mean one of those ones that's mean to be about 100 feet up in the air and far away from people and buildings. Huge purple and orange sparks shoot all over the back alley, all over everyone's yards. Everyone runs out on the back porch.

Then there are huge 5-6 foot flames shooting up out of the idiots' backyard. Something is on fire, but I can't tell. Moron and crew try to put the huge fire out by throwing pots and pans full of water onto it. The only amusing part was the choir of neighbor voices collectively calling them dumbasses and all sorts of foul words. Then I realize what they're burning - a motorbike scooter thing. The neighbors are all yelling because they're freaked out that there's still gas in the thing.

Moron and crew start yelling back defensively, "Ain't no gas in it! Shut up! Ain't no gas!"

Then some neighbors dragged their hoses over and put it out. The fire department shows up, but the fire's out. The police show up, but do nothing. As the last cop walks away I asked him what the deal was.

"You mean you can't do anything to them for this?" I asked.

He immediately gets defensive. "Hold on, ma'am, let me explain. We can't do anything to them because we didn't see them do anything. Yes, fireworks are illegal, but we didn't see them light it so we can't do anything."

I tell him that I can show him 30 neighbors who saw them do it. Still, they can't do anything. Something about how it's on private property.

What a waste. It was really dangerous what they did. Eric made a comment on my last post about us doing similar things with fireworks at my parents' house - but this was really different.

#1- They did it in their tiny little eight by 12 backyard extremely close to all the neighbors.
#2- Their immediate neighbors have their heating oil tanks in their backyards.
#3- They did it to a motorbike that could have still had gas inside of it.
#4- It was a huge, huge firework that shot sparks up to 30 feet away. I saw them land in my backyard and beyond.

The list goes on - these guys are morons.

We had heard they were being evicted, but that has not turned out to be true, unfortunately. They're still there acting like idiots. Thankfully there've been no more fireworks, but I'll bet July 4 will be interesting this year.

Several days later Amy and I were out back hanging up laundry when one of the younger morons - maybe 13 or 14 - comes outside with a gun. I look over and he quickly hides it behind his back. There's no plastic orange tip on this one, it looks real from where I am. He runs back inside. Then later I see him pointing it out his upstairs window all over the place. Again, I tell Amy, "I hope that's fake."

Slightly disturbing. The only even slight humor from that tale comes about 15 minutes later. Amy and I decide to go for a walk that evening so we exit out the backyard. Moron kid is still pointing the gun out his window, so I tell Amy to glance back at it for a look. She's not sure if it's real either.

Anyway, we shrug it off, I'm not going to start anything with them. I had told that cop that I was afraid of retaliation from them.

So, we're about 15 feet down the alley way and into the street when the kid yells out, "F*cking dykes!"

Lovely. Here I'd thought we'd been doing well in not getting any anti-gay slurs thrown at us yet in our new neighborhood. Only took a year!

Anyway, I've been called much worse. Plus, reacting angrily to it just gives idiots more power, so I do my regular reaction when called names like that.

I turned around, waved at him, gave a big smile and yelled back, "Thanks for noticing!"

Then we keep walking. From there his insult becomes surprise, it was a hilarious transition.

"Wait! Wait! Are you for real? Are you really? Wait! Come back! Are you for real?"

Amy and I laughed for the rest of our walk. First he was trying to hate us, then he got excited. Like we're going to go back and talk to him.

"Why yes, we are f*cking dykes! Here's our trade manual, please give us some time to tell you more!"

Ah, Baltimore. I'd rather not jinx myself by saying nothing crazy has happened since then, but I just did. I was slightly worried that that anti-gay slur would lead to vandalism of our property, but thankfully that hasn't happened. If it did, we'd know exactly who to accuse, anyway.

I've probably made my neighborhood sound like a drug-riddled crime zone. In some ways, I suppose it it. But it's also got a lot of nice stuff. I can sit out front and garden. Neighbors say Hi from their front porches as you walk by. The little league team goes door to door for donations and their parents escort them and make sure they say please and thank you. Monday nights are little league nights at the field at the end of our street and the whole neighborhood turns out for it.

It's got good and bad.