So, Tod, what happened next? Is this gonna be a serial thriller?
Posted on 01/23/2004 6:15:33 AM PST by stainlessbanner
When you live in a gated community, you take a few things for granted as part of the fees you pay to your HOA. In casual neighborhood disputes (unless, of course, you live in one of the warring Summerlin communities), you can expect that you'll have an open forum on the second Tuesday of every month to discuss how Mr. Jones has kept his Christmas lights up a week too long, how Mrs. Luvalle continues to put her garbage out two days early, thus giving the neighborhood cats and rats the opportunity to fill the streets with her half-filled bottles of cheap vodka and pesky Styrofoam containers bursting with last night's uneaten Early Bird Special, and how the gardening staff continues to leave clippings everywhere. What all this does, effectively, is it stops me from brandishing a firearm at Mrs. Luvalle, which is good for both of us.
For the most part, all of this is fine and good. Dealings with neighbors become strictly bureaucratic, not terribly personal, and, eventually, everyone decides that what they really want is to be left the fuck alone. And so it was until last month, when a man and a woman moved into a house a few doors down from me.
They arrived a few weeks before Christmas and at first I didn't notice much about them other than that the man always wore what looked like a Confederate soldier's hat: to the pool, to the mailbox, dragging his cans down to the street...and even to the grocery store, where I encountered him the day before Christmas.
"You live across the street from me," he said. We were standing side by side in the meat aisle and I'd been trying to decide whether to say anything to him, which eventually led to me just blandly staring at him as he perused the ground beef.
"You just moved in, right?" It was a dumb question, because he obviously wasn't the 90-year-old woman who'd lived there (and lived, period) previously.
"Just got the place," he said. "My wife and I got tired of freezing our asses in Georgia; time to get a vacation home."
I nodded and smiled at the man, who hadn't offered his name or hand to me, and tried not to stare at his hat, which was impossible. Not only did it resemble a Confederate soldier's hat, it was a Confederate soldier's hat. "I better get back to shopping," I said, and bid my neighbor farewell so I could hustle over to the cereal aisle to call my wife. "Our new neighbor is a crazy white supremacist!" I hissed into the phone.
"I don't know about that," my wife said, "but his wife just got done stringing up a Confederate flag festooned with Christmas lights in the front yard of their house."
"What?"
"It's about 10 feet high," my wife said. "You'll love it."
After I finished my shopping, I stepped out into the parking lot and began unloading my groceries into the trunk of my car. Parked beside me was an SUV with Georgia plates, its back bumper and window covered with stickers. My eye went immediately to the one that said "The South Will Rise Again" in bold script, a snake writhing through the letters. A few others caught my notice as well--including a giant Confederate flag right above the brake light--but I was mostly mortified by the license plate frame which read, "I'm not a fag, so get off my ass."
"We meet again," my neighbor said. He was pushing his cart up to his car and smiling broadly. "Sure is a great day outside, isn't it?"
"It is," I said.
He inhaled deeply and smiled. "I don't miss Georgia at all right now. You feel this sun on your face and it's a pretty convincing reason to move west."
"Yes," I said.
He popped open his trunk and began putting his groceries away. I could see that he had noodles, a six-pack of Coke, a box of Captain Crunch, a bunch of meat, a copy of People magazine, flour, sugar, some Starbucks ice cream...or, a close approximation to exactly what I had. "See you around the pool," he said and then he gave me a genuine smile and tipped his cap to me, a gesture that was both gentlemanly and oddly classic. It made me wish I had a cap, too.
When I got home, the sun was already down and the lights from our neighbor's Confederate shrine were glowing red in the night. I told my wife, as we stood on our own front lawn, that I'd talked to the husband and that he seemed nice, but that I'd heard Hitler had some very close friends, too. Even still, the flag, the bumper stickers and the hat made me nervous in a way I'd never before encountered. Before I could say anything else, the couple from across the street stepped outside, hand in hand, and went out for a leisurely walk, just like normal people: she in jeans and a sweater, he in a Confederate cap and a Christmas sweater.
So, Tod, what happened next? Is this gonna be a serial thriller?
That said, decking a Confederate flag (and I am assuming by this that the author means a naval jack, the so-called battle flag) with Christmas lights is just not in good taste. The flag is its own statement, has its own beauty, and doesn't need embellishment. It's like putting pink hair ribbons on a noble horse.
<< whew! >> Sure glad I used black yarn! << g >>
Yes, gratuitous insults. How about:
"Our new neighbor is a crazy white supremacist!"
...that I'd heard Hitler had some very close friends, too.
...just like normal people...
Where I come from, those sound pretty insulting.
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