Last Friday, Bob and Carol Dabaks drove away from Morgan Village
and headed to their brand new home in El Dorado Hills, near
Sacramento. I felt sorry to see them go. We lived side by side in
our Morgan Hill townhouses for 6 1/2 years. Without a doubt,
they’ve been the best next-door neighbors I’ve ever had.
Last Friday, Bob and Carol Dabaks drove away from Morgan Village and headed to their brand new home in El Dorado Hills, near Sacramento. I felt sorry to see them go. We lived side by side in our Morgan Hill townhouses for 6 1/2 years. Without a doubt, they’ve been the best next-door neighbors I’ve ever had.
Through the years, we got along splendidly. We helped each other with home-improvement chores, held barbecues and dinners, and generally did the neighborly thing. Whenever the Dabaks went away, I’d watch their house, feed their fish in their courtyard pond and water their plants. And they did the same for me – all except for the fish part, because I don’t own fish.
And I’ve watched their grandchildren grow and experience life. The little ones, Ashley and Jake and Malory, kept sprouting up. They seemed inches taller every time I saw them.
Overall, I’ve been extremely lucky with neighbors. My experiences with the people who live nearby have generally been positive. Growing up in Hollister at 104 Second St., the nearest neighbors were the Butlers, a nice family who lived not far from us. We’d sometimes helped each other out. And not far away across a grassy meadow was our neighbor, the elderly widow Mrs. Gee. When I was 13, Mrs. Gee gave me my first summer job. I did her yard work, painted her fence and did simple home repairs for her.
When I worked in England for a news service in the 1990s, I lived at 16 Milton Ave. in London’s Highgate district. One of my neighbors, an Egyptian woman named Samia, truly reminded me of Lucy Ball in the old “I Love Lucy” TV show. Somehow, Samia always got herself caught in wild hair-brained schemes. And sometimes she dragged me into these crazy schemes.
One time, we took her little boy Jay and her new-born daughter to see the dinosaur skeletons in London’s Natural History Museum. We almost had the entire building evacuated when Samia parked the stroller in an “out of the way” corner and museum guards found it and feared the unattended perambulator might be holding a bomb.
When I lived in San Jose, first at Elden Drive and then at Rafton Drive, I came to know my neighbors through summer block barbecues and winter holiday parties. These are great ways to get acquainted with the people you live near.
The only time I had a real rift with one of my neighbors happened on the Fourth of July in San Jose. I’d heard the man who lived across the street had got married the weekend before (he kept the wedding a secret from everyone), and I went over to congratulate him. Big mistake.
Gary had downed a few brews that Independence Day afternoon. As I approached him, he started yelling and swearing at me. His arms started swinging wildly and I backed away, thinking he might hit me. Apparently, he was upset that I hadn’t waved at him a month or two before when I drove down the street and he was in his front yard watering his rose bushes.
In Morgan Village where I now live, neighbors come and go. They leave for new homes, and other folks replace them. That’s the way it goes in California, where the roiling real estate market produces a changing tide of home owners.
It’s good to get to know your neighbors and develop a friendship with them. People, by nature, are social animals. We’ve evolved to survive in the overall protection of groups.
Knowing your neighbors has several benefits. One is that it makes your neighborhood a safer place to live. You can watch out for each other. Another plus is that good neighbors help each other out with the ordinary chores of life, such as emergency baby-sitting or borrowing that proverbial cup of sugar.
But most of all, living in a neighborhood where people know and respect each other means your home is a more pleasant place to come back to at the end of the day.
It’s not hard to meet your neighbors. I found the best way to acquaint yourself is to simply say “hi” and introduce yourself. Most people want to get to know the folks they’re living near. Those that don’t wish to be cordial will let you know.
In a wider view, just like Morgan Village, the South Valley is a neighborhood, too. The neighbors are the communities of Hollister, San Juan Bautista, Gilroy, San Martin, Morgan Hill and big San Jose.
Overall, this regional neighborhood gets along well. But like in all neighborhoods, there are tensions. Morgan Hill now faces San Jose’s expansion plan for an urban development in Coyote Valley. The neighborhood will have to sort out this heated political rift.
Nations are neighbors, too. The United States and our neighbor to the north, Canada, has overall had a friendly relationship. We share the longest unprotected border in the world.
Unfortunately, the United States’ relationship with its neighbor to the south faces tensions regarding the issue of illegal immigration. Recently, American politicians have proposed constructing a long, expensive wall along our border with Mexico. Good fences make good neighbors, the proverb goes. But I doubt an ugly wall will improve our neighborly relationship with Mexico. It will only increase the stress between our two countries because it will amplify fear and distrust between us.
When a country builds a wall to segregate people, unhappy things happen. People were never meant to be divided by walls. Walls don’t work.
In Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall,” he says, “There’s something that hates a wall.” Perhaps that something is the human spirit. Folks won’t long live divided. They were created to enjoy summer barbecues and winter holiday parties together – like we do here in Morgan Village.
By the way, I met my new next-door neighbor, a woman named Johanna. She’s very nice. I’m sure we’ll get along splendidly.
