The Next Door Neighboors

Our family is one of the original owners in our neighborhood. Jack and Katie Miller were my next door neighbors for almost as long as I can remember. They had nine children, all with first names starting with a J or a K. The Millers weren't the original next door neighbors. The original neighbors were the Van Der Booms. Our parents were best friends with their parents. They had four children in their family and their were five children in our family.. Our families vacationed together, camping and fishing all over California. Often my oldest brother would spend summers in Oregon with an aunt so it was four children each, a good fit for our families. When the Van Der Booms moved to Panorama City, and then out to Thousand Oaks, we would still go camping together and whoever made it to the campground first would reserve a spot for the other and leave a note on the community message board simply saying "Lyon - # 21" or Van Der Boom - Blue Jay #1" so we could find one another.

We never made it to a warm friendly stage with our new neighbors. Maybe we weren't ready to have new neighbors, maybe it was the fact that there were just too many of the Millers. Whatever the reason we seem to be feuding with the Miller children early on. Kristy, who was my age, and I did get along when not carrying on the feud because our older siblings were at war. They sometimes called us traitors because they weren't getting along so we shouldn't play together either. I was the youngest and she was next to the youngest so we shared some similar experiences in family pecking order. If it weren't for going to different schools we might have continued to associate more as classmates but I went to public school and she went to Catholic School. We got to be sorta friends later on in Jr. High when her parents couldn't afford the private school tuition and were forced to send her and her younger sister to public school.

I remember the day that put an end to any chance at our families ever becoming close. Something touched off a particularly intense battle between the Lyon kids and the Miller kids. Our neighborhood had been built in the late 40's and laid out with redwood fences along the back and sides of each property. Now in the early 60's the fence dividing our property and the Millers was in poor shape. We didn't help it any by tossing things over, knocking out the knot holes so we could poke thing through it, and even kicking out a board now and then. It was common to do so about once a week. Don't remember how it started that day but stuff came and went over, under, and through the fence. Boards were pulled off and hurled back n forth. On and on sometimes hitting a target and hearing OUCH!, sometimes breaking a window. Then dad came home to find our patio and theirs littered with fence boards, broken toys, loads of other debris and us children with splinters in our hands and knots on our heads from the "artillery" hurled over the fence. It was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. That weekend, what was left of the old redwood fence came down and the first block wall went up.

The old fence had been only four or five feet tall. Adults could easily see over the back and side fences and carried on great friendships that continued even after a neighbor moved to another part of town or all they way to Thousand Oaks. The new fence was six feet high and filled with concrete and re-bar every two feet even though building code only required one every four or five feet. From the front of the house out it was three and a half feet. If my dad had his way it would have been six feet all the way to the city sidewalk. We were told we couldn't play with the Miller's not to even talk to them. Kristy and I really were becoming friends and were sorry but what was done, was done. We even tried to tear the fence down before the concrete dried. We managed to pull a couple of bricks off the top of the front portion before being caught. The bricks were set back in place but didn't set quite right and were always a bit crooked. They were easily knocked loose a couple of times over the years and finally were glued back with some new kind of cement.

I don't remember how or why things got so bad between our families. Over the years we'd feud a bit more mostly over noise from the garage band that a couple of the older Miller kids had. They played hard rock and by then the houses were surrounded by block walls that only made the sound echo. I remember my brothers had a lawn service and had several mowers. One day when the band started up they started three mowers next to the block wall and beat on trash cans trying to out do the noise level.

We grew up and as adults put the childish feud behind us and appreciate one another now. I inherited my parents house and have raised my own children here in Lynwood. The wall was my dad's grudge wall. It stood more then 40 years through earthquakes, numerous children climbing on it and even survived a car crashing into the very front part of it. It didn't even move. One or two bricks developed small cracks that's all. Katie had asked me a few times about taking it down. It was right next to her driveway and made getting in and out of her car difficult. I t also didn't conform to current city code. With few exceptions, you can't have a solid fence in the front higher then two feet. I discover just how crazy my dad had gone with the project when a couple of summers a go I tore out the front portion. I could not remove the old footing. It runs too deep and too hard to break up. At least three feet deep. The four foot section nearest the sidewalk that didn't budge when a car hit it had even deeper concrete. The concrete filled bricks were tough enough and took several hours with a sledge hammer to break up. In the concrete that filed some of the bricks I could still see the finger prints and holes from little fingers that had tried to tear down the wall. Some are mine some are Kristy's. A few years ago Kristy passed away due to complications from lupus. We were only about four years old when the wall went up. By the time we had a chance at being friends in Jr High it just wasn't the same. Another kind of wall had grown between us that wouldn't allow a deep true friendship to grow. Tearing out that old grudge wall was a way to honor Kristy, someone who once had the potential of being another great friend. I kept some of the bricks with those little finger prints.

Jack passed away many years ago after a long illness. Katie passed away recently. It seemed so sudden even though she was in her 80's. She hadn't been sick or become an invalid but did have many of the ailments of the elderly. She had been preparing for when she would no longer be able to live on her own and have to go to nursing care. She felt the biggest thing was to have the house ready to sell or rent so she had all new windows, new roof, texture coat and painted inside. She even had the electrical brought up to code with a new breaker panel replacing the old fuse box. Every few months a different work crew was working on something. Just last week there was some kind of work going on next door. She was as active as she could be having been through heart bypass and a stroke among other things. Was a devote Catholic and active in her church volunteering up to the day she passed. My brother was staying over that day since he was working a job closer to us then his home. He made a comment about her passing... " I guess that's the last we'll see of the Millers" Not said as part of any old grudge or feud but simply a matter of fact that the family would sell the house and no longer have any reason to come to Lynwood. This made me realize someone connected to some of my earliest memories in life is gone. I've watched all of the neighbors move away or pass on. Many of the homes have had several families come and go but Katie was always there. I'm feeling a bit strange to now be the last of the "old" neighbors. Some of the "newer" neighbors thought of Katie simply as the old lady who had been here the longest. A few thought of her as some kind of oddity and pondered why she stayed so long after all her children had moved away. I too sometimes wondered but to me she was just my next door neighbor. I guess I am the oddity now. My own children now eighteen and twenty one will soon be out of the house all together in the next few years and my husband and I will be the old couple who's children have moved away. It is a strange feeling.

A few months before I took down the fence, I started coming home to find a bag or two of groceries on my front porch. When my children were in grade school we would receive care packages from the school food drives at Thanksgiving and Christmas but these bags of groceries started at an odd time of the year well past the holidays. About once or twice a month I would open my door to get the mail or come home to find a bag or two loaded with canned and dry goods. Sometimes brand names sometimes government sponsored canned meat, juice, or instant potatoes. All kinds of dry goods. About the third bag the mystery was solved when Katie mentioned she had left the groceries and wanted to know if we really used the canned goods and such. The groceries came from a food bank for the seniors and most of the stuff she couldn't use because of her various health problems. Too much salt, sugar etc. or she just didn't cook much and wanted to see someone get the food that needed it. Yes it was very much needed and appreciated. Many times those bags of groceries came when the pantry was getting bare or our budget thin. Some of the stuff we wouldn't use as often so we were able to pass on to a couple of friends. This surprise of groceries on the stoop continued for the past two years. The last few bags even had fresh vegetables. The very last one just two weeks before she passed had about a dozen of one of my favorite vegetables, fresh zucchini. What a nice treat. We have a good stock of dry goods that will last us for some time. Katie will be remembered each time we use something from the pantry. If her family has a gathering as part of a memorial, I'll have no trouble making a casserole. Good fences don't make good neighbors. Especially cold hard brick ones. You don't have to be close or spend much time together. Its the small things like a bag of groceries that make good neighbors.