I've been sick. My daughter had it for 2 weeks, and as she shows signs of recovery I'm now coming down with it.
And so I'm sleeping in the middle of the afternoon when there's a "broom...BRRRROOM.. BRRRROOOOM" noise outside, construction, and I get up and look out the front window and the neighbors have begun to assemble a basketball hoop. It's one of the upright ones, and he has a his wife and her sister helping them, they're banging the pipes together on the sidewalk.
He doesn't know what he's doing. When he worked he was a tradesman. But he's not working now and he's brought the same expertise to bear on assembling this basketball hoop.
Plastic, cardboard, all strewn over the front lawn. Wal Mart again. The dumpster, (it was supposed to be gone, I asked him, yeah, he had no explanations) is full, he'll need another one to fit in the packaging for this.
I sit on the front steps to watch. He's pulled a picket off of the fence and is using it to cushion the pipes from the sidewalk, up on a ladder with a hammer banging on it while his sister-in-law holds the pipes together and he bangs with the hammer.
I have a bad feeling about this. There's no place around here they can play basketball. Our yard is grass and dumpster, not concrete, and I can imagine them setting this up in front of my office window, using the sidewalk to dribble and shoot, errant balls coming through the office window....
After another hour or two they give up. The hoop, unassembled, is brought to the back door, they leave it in front of it with their jumbo orange bags filled with beercans, Domino's Pizza boxes, 12 packs of Dr. Pepper. There's a recycling bin and trash area in the back, they haven't figured out how to use it. They leave the plastic wrapping drifting about the yard, the upturned fence picket with nails sticking through in the middle of the front sidewalk. I'm resolved not to clean up after them, my boy and I the weekend previous cleaned up the yard, picked up their cigarette butts, beer cans,and rubbish, I don't want to make it a habit. The fence picket is dangerous though.
I lasted 3 days. The plastic and cardboard were still blowing over the yard, the fence picket with rusty nails poking through still in the middle of the sidewalk. They step over it as they go to get groceries. Against all my better judgement I pick it up - not, I tell myself, for them, but for the other neighbors, the residents of the neighborhood, who must be looking upon all of this with the same skepticism that I am.
I want to talk to them, explain to them what's acceptable, but they wouldn't get it. Wouldn't get it at all. And so it goes.