By David Smith
March 25, 2024
Greetings from the weirdo,
I think that every street has an unusual neighbor. I’ve lived in enough places that I suspect that in some cases it has been me. I hovered over the word ‘unusual’, wanting to say ‘peculiar’ or ‘strange’ or something more inspired, but I tiptoed around all the available adjectives, based not on creativity or clarity, but liability. So.
The street I grew up on had a few characters whose background was never fully understood or explained to me. There was Bud, who was a loveable old man who would sit in a giant woven cane chair in his front yard and talked with anyone who walked by. If my memory is correct, on summer nights he would sit out there until dark, sipping on something stimulating, and say friendly things to people passing by. Kind of like one of those little free libraries, except a person.
There was the Berry family, who somehow, we thought were rich because Mr. Berry managed the theater downtown, drove a Ford Mustang and smoked cigars. If they ever had kids they were not evident, so we volunteered to climb in the cherry tree in their front yard in their absence. I will acknowledge here that this charitable act was not requested or welcomed. It was like cultural imperialism on a micro level. Regardless, the absence of children was the unusual thing. For me, a house with fewer than three kids was bizarre.
There was a dog down the street, Sadie, who was eternally pregnant. Even before I understood the biology behind this, (still not clear, if I’m honest) I sensed from her owners, whose names I forget but lived next to Craig’s house, that it was a process they seemed helpless to prevent. Poor Sadie would lie in the strip of grass by the street, panting, with her enormous rows of teats, a subject of some fascination to me, and sometimes featured in my weekly inventory for confession at St. Matthew’s.
There was a boy at the end of the street who everyone said looked like me, but neither of us saw the resemblance, a member of the Chiavaras family. I’m not sure if they qualify as unusual, but they were memorable, in part because their house was at the corner, technically on the cross street, so Tommy Chiavaras was like a kid from out of town.
It also underscores this: sometimes when I think of my neighborhood I think of the block I lived on, more accurately, the one side of Chandler where our house was. When I saw people who had adult children, or who had a cat instead of a good pet like a dog, or whose kids didn’t play ‘kick the can’, I frowned in judgment. I was a xenophobe, of sorts.
I suppose every house had its unusual character. One neighbor poisoned our dog. One family hosted athletes on the local hockey team, one of whom saved me from falling out of a tree. There was an old couple whose name I don’t know and only remember because their light was always turned off on Halloween. And there then was the Koepkes. I realize I run the risk of getting the facts wrong here, but I am not a journalist, I am a flawed observer.
What was unusual about the Koepkes was, first, they didn’t have a driveway or a garage. This may be because they didn’t have a car, which would have put another check in the unusual category. It took a while for me to connect the amazing coincidence that someone who didn’t have a car happened to find the only house on the block, or maybe the city, that didn’t have a driveway.
I never saw the inside of the Koepke household. The windows were always covered, so even a casual perambulation on an evening when everyone’s business was offered like the display windows at Smith Bridgman’s, gave no hint of the goings on inside. I was never prone to casual perambulation, but perhaps skidded to a stop from time to time in front of 515 to see what passed for living at the Koepke’s. If the Koepke kids ever played outside, I didn’t see them. I should note they were girl-kids and they would have been invisible to me for many years. But the impression stuck.
My sisters had been inside the Koepke’s home, since the previously reported girls living there were of compatible age. My sisters reported that the Koepkes did not have a TV. We unanimously added this fact to the unusual side of the roster. In fact, it was underlined and in bold.
Most of the years I lived on Chandler Street I was too young to know better about much of anything. The remaining years I stolidly resisted learning to know better. So, I didn’t spend much time investigating beyond my first impressions, which in the Koepke’s case, were somewhat ambiguous.
I’ve not researched to add color to the Koepke’s history, other than to drive by to look at their house recently, fully expecting the drapes to be closed. This is how I learned another unusual thing to add to the list. The house is gone. It was not replaced, in fact, there is no sign that anyone ever lived there. Vegetation appears to have always been the chief tenant. I will also add here that no other house on the block is missing except for the Koepke’s.
A reasonable person would assume that the Koepkes took the house with them. Probably wherever they moved was a place that also didn’t have a driveway. If you could see what was going on inside my head, this makes perfect sense. I mean, no one else took their house when they moved.
I realize that some of what I am writing may not be fair, since my memory is somewhat permeable, especially given the five decades since any of this allegedly took place. Still, I stand by my impressions. Ann Lamott said, “If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” It may not be an exact fit, but I’m in charge here.
By the way, I just took the garbage out wearing my pajamas. Just trying out the weird, see if it fits.
Hope this finds you wondering if it’s you,
David
Copyright © 2024 David Smith