A Two-fer . . .

Ernesto, who mows my lawn, called me yesterday, which he almost never does.  He's a friend of mine, a Bolivian who has been here for thirty years and a citizen since 2000.  He speaks passable English (I am envious when I sit outside with my next door neighbor occasionally--she is his brother--and those two start speaking together in an indigent dialect from South America which means that they speak three languages, including of of course Spanish, whereas I can only speak one) but he is not fully up on politics in America so I do my best to inform him.

He told me that he had just voted early at City Hall and it only took him five minutes--in and out with no one else there except for the registrar.  He thanked me for informing him of the existence of early voting and where to go and when it was open (M-F 9-5 untill election week) because he wasn't sure otherwise if he would have gone to his local precinct at the elementary school on election day and waited on line during a pandemic to vote otherwise and getting an absentee mail-in ballot was otherwise too cumbersome for him in Virginia (you have to obtain the proper application form, fill it out correctly, send it to the proper place, receive the ballot back, fill that out correctly, including fulfilling properly all the requirements for the return envelope including a proper signature in the right place. and sending it back so it'll arrive in time in an era when the U.S, mail is being deliberately being slowed down by Postmaster Louis DeJoy, a Trump sycophant).

I was gratified to hear from Ernesto because I had offered to take my neighbor, her husband and her two adult children to City Hall to vote when I went  to vote early but they were no shows when I knocked on their door at the prearranged time.  I then issued a standing offer to drive any of them to City Hall during early voting hours but a complicated series of reasons why they had no time to do this whenever I suggested a time made it dawn upon me that although they revile Donald Trump, they were going to vote, if at all, on their own time.

I felt bad that I really had no other plans to work in this election--I am too much in a suspect group health-wise to physically electioneer during a pandemic--besides voting early myself, sending modest checks to democratic senatorial candidates and putting up a Biden sign in my yard.  Receiving Ernesto's call out of the clear blue yesterday was a delight.

More dining in the age of coronavirus

My neighbor used the chain link fence that runs down my driveway separating her house from mine to grow a cucumber vine upon.  It grew several fat cucumbers just hanging down.  I would show you a picture of the one I selected for a meal, after I asked my neighbor if I could have one, but this blog stopped importing pictures from my computer a few months ago and aside from pictures already in my blog posts, I can't get pictures to populate here anymore.  (Shrug)

I cut off the cucumber and hurried inside.  I had already laid out three plate with slices of sour dough bread on them.  After I rinsed off the cucumber, I slathered a little bit of light mayo on the bread slices and partially peeled the cucumber, making it look striped.  I sliced the cucumber medium thick and laid a single layer of sliced cucumbers on the bread and sprinkled a light dusting of sea salt on them.

I put the top slice of bread on the creation and enjoyed a delicious sandwich which was very filling.  The key was eating the sandwich within five minutes of taking the cucumber off the vine.  I took the other two sandwiches next door for the lady whose cucumber I used and her husband.  They said they enjoyed it very much, that previously they had only created a vinegar brine for cucumber slices to enjoy them that way.

The next day my neighbor brought me a cucumber sandwich she had made with a fresh cucumber in the same way but with additions.  She added guacamole to the sandwich along with finely chopped red onions, which made the sandwich even more tasty than my simpler sandwich was.  The possibilities are endless.  And I didn't have to travel further than my driveway in these perilous times to enjoy a sumptuous lunch.

Open House

My house is old and run down so sometimes I go to open houses in town in contemplation of moving.  My neighbor across the street is a realtor so I often pass by houses he has for sale and sometimes chat him up about them.

I went to an open house on Sunday and ran into a person I used to be friends with whom I hadn't seen in 15 years.  She's a great friend of my ex-wife; during the time I had visitation with my children, hers was the house they always wanted to go to on pre-arranged sleepovers with her children instead of on scheduled weekends with me.

Whenever I encounter townspeople from way back when, I always ask them about what they currently know about my three children (now adults) because I haven't had any communication with them in almost a decade.  The divorce, you know.

This woman answered all my questions, bless her (in contrast to my children's mother, who stonily kept silent when I encountered her on a street two years ago and asked her about my children's welfare).  It turns out my two older sons have recently broken up with their girlfriends so that tells me they're alive at least, I infer, and the youngest one got married a year ago.

You can't go home again.

My boyhood friend Erik from Staten Island got married last weekend in New Jersey in a beautiful Catholic church and put on a sumptuous reception nearby at a spectacular mountaintop restaurant in upstate New York.  His bride, a divorcee, could get married in the Catholic church because her first marriage was a civil ceremony and so never occurred (a nullity); Protestants like myself find the convoluted rules governing Catholic membership and available services incomprehensible.

Afterwards I returned to Staten Island for a trip through nostalgia.  The street beside the house I lived in when I was twelve, which I remembered to be plenty big enough for our numerous games of touch football and kick the can, seemed too narrow to be suitable for such activities to an adult eye.

The garage to that house with its simple one-level rental unit above it (the third story was a mere loft used as an attic) was sold off separately later as a carriage house and the property was separated.  I spoke with the papergirl delivering the Sunday Staten Island Advance and she filled me in on many of the folks I knew in childhood, who still had an association with the neighborhood.

For instance, the boy next door who was exactly my age and wanted to be a priest grew up to be a real estate agent, always lived at home, inherited the house and now lived there alone as a recluse with major health issues starting with "bad teeth," and the fireman on the block, a friend of my dad, had passed on recently and his widow lived on in their home with their son, a friend of my brother, who had never left the house and worked for the post office.  I eschewed knocking on any doors in the old neighborhood although apparently, half a century later, I would have known several of the people who answered.

Closeness

It's official. This is the snowiest winter (54+ inches) in recorded history in DC, with six weeks to go.

My office has been closed since last Friday. That's also the last day I received any mail, two blizzards ago.

It reminds me of when I lived in Colorado, all except for the closed-office part. All of the sidewalks are shoveled and the sun is doing its work on the icy parts.

Snowshoveling promotes neighborhood closeness. The standoffish couple across the street were shoveling the ice chunks left by the snowplow at the head of their driveway this morning in preparation to driving away and going to work. I went over to help clear the debris so they could get underway.

Did I say they were standoffish? My appearance to "help" mortified them. They started shoveling feverishly to complete the task in as little time as possible. We finished swiftly, they thanked me and drove quickly away. Snowshoveling really brought us closer.

Got debt?

I received a strange phone call yesterday. I'm home this week on annual leave.

Ms. Chisum called, and using my first name, asked how I was doing. Since I don't know any Ms. Chisum, I was immediately suspicious.

She wanted to know if had a neighbor by the name of, let's say, Juan Gonzalez. I asked why.

Instead of answering my question, she drew out the conversation. She correctly said that I lived on [street name and number], and continued, "And Mr. Gonzalez lives at, I want to say... I want to say... [street name and number], right?" That is the correct address for the house next door.

I said, "You must be a bill collector."

She said,"No." I'm pretty sure she was lying at this point, but perhaps she was denying that she "must" be a bill collector.

I said I didn't know the name of who lived next door. She asked if I would go post a note on their door.

At that house, there has been a succession of yearly tenants, usually several unrelated adults with children sometimes present. There have been a few police visits to the house over the years, with at least one being in response to an alleged shooting there.

Last year I had my garage spray painted with a gang sign, the numeric designation of an urban semi-automatic gun. I have my suspicions who did it since there was a large party going on next door on that weekend day when I drove away at noon, and the party was over and the obscene symbol was on my garage wall a few hours later when I returned.

I asked Ms. Chisum what the note would say. You like to be helpful. Perhaps the occupant's wife was in labor in Bolivia or something and he needed to call home.

Ms. Chisum said, "It would just contain my name and number, with a note asking Mr. Gonzalez to call."

I asked her if she was a bill collector. There was a long silence and then Ms. Chisum said, "I already said no to your earlier question."

I declined to undertake the requested action and the call terminated.

In my profession, I deal with the Fair Debt Collections Practice Act ("FDCPA"), a statute written by Congress which prohibits debt collectors from engaging in a laundry list of abusive practices like smearing an individual's name by calling up his or her neighbors (or employers--sometimes repeatedly) and alerting them to the supposed presence of a deadbeat in their midst. I referred to the wording of the statute and found that Ms. Chisum either did, or did not, violate the statute if she was a debt collector, which I'm pretty sure she was.

She was entitled to call me up if she was genuinely trying to locate the actual address of the deadbeat. She cannot state to an unrelated party that the purpose of the call involves an attempt to collect a debt. She has to give her name. So far Ms. Chisum complied.

If directly asked, she has to disclose the name of her employer. I asked how she was employed, not who her employer was. It would do me little good if she said to me, "I work for the ABC Company."

I consulted with a fellow lawyer who said that theoretically my question whether she was a debt collector triggered Ms. Chisum's duty under that part of the statute to truthfully respond, putting her in violation of the FDCPA. I'm not sure I agree with that, but this attorney agreed with me that neither of us would go to court to try to cite this set of facts as being clearly violative of the FDCPA.

This attorney also said that Ms. Chisum was very professional and acted correctly by not disclosing to me that Mr. Gonzalez was a deadbeat. Which would have been apparent if she had confirmed that she was a debt collector.

See how vague this statute, like many statutes, is? Ms. Chisum was lying to me, but fulfilling the spirit of the law. Where does that leave me, the innocent recipient of this legally allowable call?

I know this much. If I was naive and eager to help without first ascertaining all the facts (the "wife giving birth in Bolivia" scenario), I could go post the requested note next door and step right into the middle of an acrimonious financial dispute. This would be a great thing to unleash in a neighborhood.

Imagine this scenario. I post the supposedly innocuous note on my neighbor's door. Mr. Gonzalez comes home at midnight, having put in a hard day's work followed by a full evening of relaxation at a tavern. He's handed a note which he sees as a demand by a debt collection company to call them, which has been taped onto his door by his next-door neighbor.

I'd sure like to hear pounding on my door at midnight, forcing me to arise from bed so I could go discuss on my porch the note I'd posted hours earlier on my enraged neighbor's door in an attempt to be helpful.

Did I already say it's a vague (in parts) statute?

Let it snow.

Over the weekend the DC area had a record breaking snowfall. It cancelled the government on Monday. You know it's getting near the end when a friend calls you up more than once and worriedly asks if you're taking it easy while shoveling snow. Your ancient heart and all, you know.

I told my friend that if throwing a little snow around was going to do me in, I shouldn't be in the gene pool anymore. She assured me that my days of being in the gene pool anymore were long gone.

And where were my three strapping boys who I put through college (full tuition & fees--no student loans, yay!) while I was clearing twenty inches of snow off 90 feet of driveway, 90 feet of sidewalk and 24 feet of walkway? MIA as usual. I hope they were at least at their Mother's house helping shovel the driveway and walk. Her new husband is over 60, after all.

Although I doubt it, the young generation being what it is. I helped shovel out the driveway of a neighbor who is pretty incapacitated by physical ailments. A house guest of his, in her forties, had already done most of it. His twenty year-old son showed up, felt obliged to pitch in since I was there laboring away, threw about four half-shovelfuls of snow to the curb, and then brushed snow off his buried car for the last half hour I was there finishing the job. Motion without much momentum.

When I got home from that neighborliness a city snowplow had come down our street. Its driver barreled along my curb line at about 30 MPH and pushed the snow over the snowbank onto my bone dry sidewalk, covering a long stretch of it with two two feet of snow and ice chunks from the street. I had expected to shovel the end of my driveway again after it passed, but not my sidewalk all over again. Nobody else's sidewalk was similarly treated.

This annoyed me greatly. It is still unshoveled, forcing pedestrians to detour into the street to get past my house, and it's going to remain that way til it melts.

This isn't like getting tagged in blogland

I saw it as soon as I started backing into my driveway. It sprang out at me in the rear view mirror. Thirty feet back, on the white cinder block wall of my garage, was an oblong black blob about two feet tall and eight inches wide. What the...?!!

Graffiti spray painted on and running down in messy drips. I couldn't read it but the cop I summoned to take the report (in case there's a pattern of such vandalism in my neighborhood) could. MS13. When he said it, I too could read the hurried, messy lettering.

My house marked by a violent Latino gang. Here in the 'burbs. At the head of my driveway. Some crazy punk stood at the exact spot deep in my yard where I always park my unlocked car for the night, six feet away from the rear door that I always use exclusively and often leave unlocked when I sleep at night or go for a run.

No more.

"It's a lousy job," said the cop. "Maybe it's just a local kid wannabee. Usually it's much more artistic. But I'd get it off right away."

I thought darker thoughts about the Section-Eight house next door, between me and the strip mall bordering my neighborhood. The house at which there was a shooting a couple of years ago. The house at which there is a constantly shifting influx of people.

There had been a large gathering with many cars there on Saturday morning when I drove away to join my running group, perhaps evidencing a large Friday night party. No cars were left by the time I got back after noon to find the monstrosity spray-painted on my garage.

"I haven't seen this on a neighborhood house in the city before," continued the cop. "Usually this is confined to Fairfax [further to the west]. Over there on the brick wall of that strip mall across the way is painted 'SSL,' which just showed up. That stands for 'South Side Locos.' If there were a war, they'd be allies."

"Little bastards," I kept muttering the next day as I scrubbed the offending mark off my cinder block wall, having coated it first with graffiti removal [sold at Home Depot for about seven dollars].

The One or That One

I could tell it was gone as I drove up in the dark tonight, shivering in the thirty-degree weather. My headlights shone across the large pile of leaves at his curbside.

I have been hoping that the cutting-knife icy wind that has been blowing all day today dies down before my eight-mile run with my training group tomorrow morning. But it hadn't disturbed the roundness of the leaf pile at his curb.

Leaf collection must be this week, I thought when I saw it. I was glad my headlights hadn't swept over my disordered leaf-littered yard to remind me of my slackard ways. Actually, I think fallen leaves are a good nutrient for the soil, which gives me an excuse not to rake.

I'm a terrible suburbanite. Not being a slave to my yard nor my kids and adhering to no woman's directives, I only still live here in the 'burbs because my back yard lot line abuts the 40-mile W&OD running trail at MP 7. The W&OD Trail is the premiere blacktop running path in the country. Let's see you top that!

Earlier this month, my neighbor raked his leaves into five large ordered piles in his back yard, spelling O B A M A. He restored the piles' integrity every morning. He was showboating for the W&OD Trail runners behind our houses. Runners are all democrats and believe in diversity, right?

He's from South America and is a fabulous guy. Previously I thought he spoke better English than he did, and he thought I spoke better Spanish then I did, and now we pantomime a lot. So much for worldwide high school language classes. But he was pleased to confirm for me that his piles said, "Obama."

I hate change. I liked his piles. When I drove into my driveway tonight , I could see that his orderly piles had been dragged to his curb and lumped into a single large refuse mound. Did The One become "that one?"

I should rake my lawn before all my leaves blow over to his place. Or maybe I won't.