When we moved out of my mother’s house in Brighton MA nearly
25 years ago to the tony suburb of Newton (I’m joking about the tony part; I
live across the street from a landscaper and his chorus of leaf blowers), our
new next door neighbors Hank and Jeanette, a retired childless couple, seemed
like nice folks. Hank introduced himself with a smile, laughing “some folks
call me ‘Hank the crank.’” Didn’t seem like much of a crank to me.
But with an introduction like that, it shouldn’t have
surprised me when the other shoe dropped. It’s difficult to say exactly what
triggered the turnaround. It appeared to be some combination of educational
resentment (he began calling me “college boy”), the number of cars passing
through my hands, and my working on them in the driveway, as the ’73 3.0CSi
occupied the precious but decrepit space inside my rusty leaning corrugated
metal single car garage. Perhaps Hank was concerned my activity was lowering
his property value. Or perhaps I’d transgressed an unwritten law about parking
opposite his house. His land yacht of a Lincoln Town Car did appear to need the
extra clearance and turning space when he’d back it out of his driveway.
Things got bad. He appeared to watch the registration and
inspection stickers on my cars, and would call the police on me if, during my
first spring drive in the 3.0CSi, either of the stickers had expired over the
winter. When I prepared to replace the
garage, the animosity erupted into all-out warfare, at least on his end. I
wanted to build a nice, new, larger structure where the old one was, but since
the old one was one foot from the property line, I had to apply for a variance.
As a lifelong Newton resident who knew a lot of people, Hank seemed to be the
invisible hand behind a rubber stamp denial. “No one needs a garage, and no one
needs one of the size you’re proposing,” solemnly intoned the head of the
committee who rejected my application. Clearly not a car guy, I thought. The
same could be said of Hank. What could someone with a Town Car–the poster child
for floaty suspension and same-day steering–know about my passions?
As it happened, the variance denial was a gift. It forced
Maire Anne and I to rethink the plans, and we wound up building a larger garage
that didn’t need variance approval. When my friend and contractor Alex showed
up with the building permit and a backhoe and started to dig, Hank was
apoplectic. When Alex accidentally knocked down a section of his fence, Hank
came out of his house, red-faced and screaming, threatening to call the police.
Alex thought Hank was going to have a heart attack, burst an aneurism, or both.
After that, I don’t think Maire Anne or I spoke to either Hank or Jeannette for
ten years.
But time softens us all. Hank and Jeannette are now elderly.
About five years ago I began using my snowblower to clear their sidewalk in the
winter. The first time I did it, Hank opened up his front door and yelled
“Robby!” I thought, what, he’s going to chew me out for this? Then he said “It’s been hard for me to deal with the snow
since I’ve been sick. Thank you so much!” I kept doing it. The relationship
thawed. At the end of each winter, they’ve given me a card and a small gift.
Last spring, they called me over and showed off the new
Honda Accord they’d just bought. They seemed to want my approval. “Very nice… Honda
builds a great product,” I said. Then I noticed their driveway was empty. “Did
you trade in the Lincoln?” I asked. “No, it’s in the garage,” Hank said (they
still had the same one-car corrugated metal structure I’d torn down). “But, we
were thinking… maybe it’s time we built a two-car garage to hold it and the Honda. Do you think your contractor
friend might be interested in doing the work? What was his name... Alex? He
seemed very nice.” I almost choked on the irony.
Late last fall, I noticed I hadn’t seen Hank around in a few
weeks. I asked Jeanette what was up. “Oh,” she said, “you didn’t know about the
accident?” She then told me the following story. Hank had become quite frail,
with signs of advancing dementia. He wanted to go for a Sunday drive in the Lincoln,
but Jeanette thought that wasn’t the best idea. They compromised and had her
brother drive. But as they were pulling out onto Rt 95, they were sideswiped by
a tractor-trailer. The car got spun completely around, then was hit on the
other side. The car’s occupants were banged up but okay. The Lincoln, however,
was totaled. As Hank’s cognitive skills continue to degrade, Jeannette explained,
he keeps asking about the Lincoln, not accepting that it’s gone, wanting to see
it and drive it again.
“He loved that car,” Jeanette offered. “It only had 20,000
miles on it. People were constantly offering to buy it from him.”
As she was explaining, it all came into focus. He’d probably
bought Lincoln the year we’d bought the house. He always garaged it. He had
vanity plates on it with his initials and his birth date. The guy I was at war
with for all these years was, in his own way, a car guy. How could I have possibly
missed this?
I can only hope that, in dementia’s meandering path, Hank finds a nice new garage, and in it,
his beloved Lincoln, and enjoys one more Sunday drive on a perfect fall day.
(Copyright Roundel Magazine, 2015)
