The love child
The brownies
and
The bounty hunter

Mr Rogers sang a song and asked, Who Are The People In Your Neighborhood?

Our move to Pacific Grove meant a new neighborhood with new people.

We’d already survived a Menopausal Neighbor, a Nosey Neighbor, A Hoarder Neighbor, a Pyromaniac Neighbor and a house full of demon teenagers…..what else was there?
We were about to find out.

Our side of the street was one big beautiful Victorian after another.
On the corner was a Bed and Breakfast, right out of a story book.
The next house belonged to an older woman who didn’t live there anymore, she lived in San Francisco.
Her house was almost always vacant.
Once in awhile her son and family would come for a week-end get-away but mostly it stood empty of people.
I window peeked once.
It was Alice-in-Wonderland adorable inside from what I could see.

Next was a 3-story house which was right next-door to us, and in that house lived a school teacher and her husband….a weirdo.
I’ll come back to him.

A hippie lived on the other side of us, an original from the 60’s.
She was a P.G. native and it was fun listening to her stories of once-upon-a-time in P.G.
She was tall and willowy thin.
Her hair fell half-way down her back in a long braid and she wore not a speck of make-up on her face.
She was hippie plain but very pretty.
She was unmarried but had a son and grandson who lived nearby.
She had a constant peaceful, kinda glazed-over look in her eyes like maybe she munched on magic-mushrooms throughout the day.
And I KNOW when she smiled and said “hi” to me…..she really meant it!

She told us she was the love-child of a famous author.
I guess I can’t tell you his name…..I can’t even tell you hers as she was named after one of the characters in one of his many stories, (but it wasn’t John Steinbeck.)
So, quit guessing!
For here, let’s call her Dorothy.
She owned her house and rented out rooms to 2 or 3 girls at a time who attended Monterey Peninsula College.
She had house rules and the girls had to agree to NO ALCOHOL/ NO BOYS IN THE ROOMS…..college girls…..right!

We could always tell when Dorothy was away for the night.
Her painted pale purple and green psychedelic Victorian rocked off it’s foundation.
Damn impressive how those girls adhered to her rules!

She once suggested with such a big house, we should consider taking in a couple of them for extra income.
Are you kidding me?
I’d have gone out on the corner first with a cardboard sign for extra income.
We lived with a house full of females once.
No mas!

Besides, the 2 extra bedrooms in our house were filled most of the time with visiting family or friends.
We lived almost on top of the Pacific Ocean and Pebble Beach was practically in our back yard, 17-Mile Drive was one block down and The Big Sur was exactly one hour from our driveway.
We had LOTS of company.

Dorothy told us that once a year her ship came in….. an inheritance check from “dad the author.”
We didn’t know the amount but figured it wasn’t enough to make it without those well behaved college girls she took in as borders. (the girls who followed her strict house rules…..those girls.)
Dorothy was her own carpenter, painter, plumber, roof repair person, tree trimmer and gardener all rolled up in one.
To say the least, she was a very interesting woman.
Straight across the street from us was a duplex.
A mother and daughter who looked more like sisters lived on one side with a weiner dog named “Bear.”
“Bear” was the reason we never let our dogs outside alone at nighttime.
He’d been attacked one night by a large, angry raccoon who had been busy pickin’ garbage.
The younger woman had run outside screaming, but the raccoon didn’t back down.
It turned on her when she pulled Bear free.
She not only ended up with badly bitten and scratched hands full of stitches but also had to endure a series of rabies injections which are known to be very painful.
When the Vet was done and had stitched Bear back together, he looked like a rag doll.
They were both a sad sight but eventually healed and the neighborhood was reminded that PG raccoons are BIG and mean, REAL mean.
After that incident, I never ventured outside anywhere on the Monterey Peninsula without my container of pepper spray.

Next door on the other half of the duplex, was a mystery man.
I saw him frequently in his carport.
He lived alone, maybe 50 years old, thin, bald and close to 6 feet tall.
I asked the two women who shared the other side about him.
They said he was an unfriendly, crabby, rude man and that’s all they knew.
They warned me to stay far from him AND to also avoid at all cost, the weird one who lived on the other side of us with his school teacher wife.
Crabby and weird…..that lit my fire.

One morning I noticed Crabby in his carport.
I decided it was time.
By afternoon, the brownies were baked and sitting on the counter looking and smelling delicious.
I cut them in generous sized pieces and placed them on a paper plate.
I sprinkled them with powdered sugar and covered them with see-through plastic wrap.
I proudly walked across the street with warm brownies in hand.
Crabby was standing by his car, looking under the hood.
I walked up next to him.
He didn’t look up.
I had to push on.
“Hi, I’m your new neighbor from across the street. I brought you some homemade brownies.”
My friendliest smile was on my face but he didn’t see it.

He didn’t look up and he didn’t respond.

He’s deaf!
He didn’t hear me.

I tapped him lightly on the shoulder.
He didn’t look up but all of a sudden in a very gruff voice I heard,

“I don’t want your brownies!”

He startled me, I for sure wasn’t expecting that and I stepped back.

“You don’t want my brownies?”

“I don’t want your brownies!”

“But I made them just for you.”

“I don’t want your brownies!”

“But just try one, everybody loves my brownies.”

“I don’t want your brownies!”

“Well, just take them and maybe you’ll want one later?”

“I don’t want your brownies!”

I couldn’t give up.

“Maybe you know someone who’d like them?”

“I don’t want your brownies?”

“Look, will ya just take the brownies? You can throw them away.”

“I don’t want your brownies!”

Oh God, he meant it, he didn’t want my brownies!

CRAP!!!!!

I turned to walk across the street defeated, with a pan of brownies.

I wanted to crawl into the nearest manhole and disappear.

The two women from the other side were standing in their front yard not even trying to pretend like they weren’t watching and listening to the brownie caper. Even Dorothy had stopped her chainsaw and was watching from across the street as she dangled from the tree limb she was trimming.

I looked at the two and motioned to the brownies.

“Do you want some brownies?”

They shook their heads NO.

I yelled across the street and up toward the tree to Dorothy.

“Want some brownies?”

NOPE, another head shake.

I was forced to retreat home still carrying the rejected brownies.

Going from one side of the street to the other felt like a mile hike with 3 sets of eyes on me.

I climbed the stairs to the front porch, another mile.

I looked back, Crabby was still under the hood and my 3 neighbors were still watching me.

That was the very last contact I had with Crabby and for the next 7 years he was referred to by me and my family as “IDONTWANTYOURBROWNIES”.

I never waved or tried to speak to that Crabby jackass again.

And the last one…..the weird man next door married to a school-teacher?
He deserves a story all to himself so…..

TO BE CONTINUED.