I live on a street in a neighborhood which, up until the hordes of Yuppies like myself moved in, was a very old-school Polish/Ukranian blue-collar area. There’s a United Dockworker’s Union sticker on my basement door. The local church is St. Casmir’s, the Ukranian Center is up around the corner on Eastern Avenue, and you can still walk into American Harry’s bar around the corner and be the only English-speaking patron out of the thirty people there. (And that’s at 9AM.)

The people on my block are one of the strongest reasons I bought my house, and have been the source of constant amusement, gossip, and security since I’ve been there. My next-door neighbors were stooping (the Baltimore practice of bringing out your Orioles stadium cushion and a cup of coffee and sitting on your marble steps to talk with neighbors) the day I looked at the house, and I talked to them for the better part of an hour. Their counsel was the deciding factor. They are an older retired couple, the type who have had three or four careers in their lives (working at Bethlehem Steel, a stint in the Marines, working at Memorial Stadium, owning a bar on the Eastern Shore, driving a hearse for the local funeral home, working as a waitress at Haussner’s) and several grown children my parents’ age; they know everything that happens in the neighborhood before it happens.

My neighbor on the other side was a widow, Mrs. B, who kept her backyard garden neat and beautiful. Until the day she died, she came out to tell me how pretty the ratty plants I was killing in my yard looked—this was before the current work was done—and who always had kind words of encouragement for the clueless kid next door.

Mr. Oxygen, across the street, was a stooped old man who came to the door of his house, directly across from mine, and stood watching the traffic pass his window each day. He got out rarely, carting his tank around with him, and always had a wave for me as I climbed the steps to unlock my door. I always made sure to wave back to him, and took care to help dig his car out in snowstorms. His children finally put him in a managed-care facility and sold his house, and now a trio of self-absorbed 20-something women live there, and they never wave.

The Cologne Man was an older Italian fellow who was shaped like an overweight pear. He wore powder-blue barber shirts and those full-coverage sunglasses you see in Florida and about half a bottle of Old Spice each day—walking across the street from him on a windy day was enough to curl your nasal hairs. His pants were always hiked up to his boobs like the Man Who Lives In A Van Down By The River. He drove an early 70’s Cadillac coupe, one of the models where the doors were longer than a city block, and when he docked that thing I prayed it wasn’t in the spot in front of or behind mine. Unfortunately, from what my neighbors tell me, he was an unpleasant man, and when he died in his sleep a few weeks ago, the rest of the block mourned for a collective five minutes.

Mr. L., down the street, was widowed about two years after I moved in. I met him and his wife one evening when the van I had parked decided to slip out of Park and into Neutral, and meander backwards down the street into the fender of their ’77 Plymouth Volare. (The Millenium Falcon, a two-tone ’73 Dodge Tradesman owned by my friend Robby, was unharmed in the assault, and later sold. It featured a large dent in the side covered with the word “OOF” painted in black primer.) Mr. L. told me his friend up on Eastern Avenue could fix the fender and we could handle it without insurance, which was good for me; he was a stand-up guy about the whole thing and I still count him as a friend. He wears bottle-thick glasses and is deaf as a post, so when you wave hello his voice booms across the neighborhood: “Hi, Bill!”

Semper, named by my good neighbor Matt, is a retired jarhead who owns a Ford Explorer with about every option available. You’ve seen it—it’s the one with seventeen USMC stickers on the back. He never drives it, but hires a guy with a truck-mounted power washer to come clean and detail it every week. His son, The Schlub, is a weaselly-looking dude who always says, “how you doing, buddy,” as he pulls one of their four cars out to go somewhere and then blocks both spots with one of the three remaining cars. This in a neighborhood where a parking space is about as rare as a swimming pool. I think, based on the words of some of my other neighbors, that Semper and The Schlub may find all their cars sitting on flat tires sometime soon.

These are but a few of the people who share the neighborhood with me; there are plenty more but I’m writing about the interesting ones first and the other ones that I remember later (for instance, the guy who built a running motorcycle from parts in his upstairs bedroom wtithout his mother knowing about it; this is a 12″x10″ room, people).

I will miss them when I leave.