Smokey the Neighbor

I don't know why it took me so long to do this post, but here it is, about two years late . . .

Smokey lived diagonally across from us in our old neighborhood and was my husband's nemesis.  Smokey was around our age and had always lived in that house because he lived with his parents. He lived there when we moved in at age 27 and he still lived there when we moved out at age 49.

We named him Smokey when we moved in because the only time we saw him was when he stood outside with his dog to have a smoke.  It was clear that his mother must not let him smoke inside the house, because rain or shine, he was out there every two hours like clockwork.  You might think he had a disability or that his parents needed him to help around the house.  Not from what we saw.  His parents did most of the yard work, and he seemed to come and go without aid.  We could never figure out what his employment situation was.  Sometimes his car was there during the day, sometimes not.

I believe I had one conversation with Smokey in our 22 years there.  I was friends with my next door neighbor, and Smokey came across the street once to talk to her while I was standing there.  The conversation involved gossiping about who had lived in our houses over the years (we were about the 6th owner), and he had nothing good to say about any of them.  When he moved on to talk about who had died in which houses down the street, I moved on home.

I can't say the conversation surprised me because he was a Creeper before that term became popular.  His idea of walking the dog involved strolling two houses down on either side of his parents' home with the dog, casually smoking, while staring at whomever was outside or drove by.  Many times, I'd see him just staring at our house.  The neighbor on the other side of me once complained that her girls thought he tried to look in their bedroom windows at night (albeit, from across the street).  I remember a number of times when I needed to get some garbage bags out to the street at 6 a.m. and decided to run out in my pajamas in the dark.  There was Smokey, standing at the end of his driveway, having a smoke.  So ANNOYING!

But the real issue we had with Smokey was his disposal of his cigarette butts.  Do you think he took them back in the house to throw them away?  Or possibly just stepped on them in his own yard?  No, he would flick them with this thumb and forefinger ACROSS THE STREET into our yards.  It was bad enough in the summer when I'd mow the grass and have all that shredded cigarette filter flying all over.  But after a long winter, when the snow finally melted, we'd have to deal with hundreds of butts along the curb.  So gross!

My neighbor friend was so angry one year, she filled a bag with the butts and stuck it in his mailbox.  Over the years, my husband grew angrier and angrier.  He would pick up handfuls of the butts and throw them back into Smokey's yard.  Finally, a confrontation took place, around 2010.  My husband walked over to Smokey, who was of course standing there smoking, and said, "Could you do me a favor?  Would you stop throwing your cigarette butts into our yard?"  Smokey acted nervous and sort of ran away, yelling over his shoulder, "I'll take care of it, I'll take care of it!"  This response didn't make much sense to me, but whatever.  The cigarette butts stopped, and our next door neighbor noticed and thanked us for saying something.

Well, you didn't think that was the end of it, did you?  No, Smokey started up with the cigarette butt flicking about a year later.  This time, my husband was furious.  One summer evening, as we were about to take a walk (and I was inside getting my shoes on), I heard some yelling and looked out to see Smokey running into his house.  My husband was all fired up.  He said he had found a ton of cigarette butts right by our mailbox and he picked them up and threw them AT Smokey.  Smokey called him an a**hole, and my husband spoke to him like he was a child saying, "You are going to stop throwing your cigarette butts into our yards!"  Smokey denied throwing them into our yard and said he was really throwing them into the sewer.  Yes, into our storm sewer that backed up into our basement every time we had a heavy rainstorm!  And since we had the realtor for sale sign in our yard, Smokey decided to add in, for good measure, that he would be glad to see us go!  My husband told him that we were moving to get away from him, and that ALL of our neighbors wished they could move, just to get away from him.  More name-calling ensued, which is what I heard, and that's when Smokey skidaddled back inside.

We were gone within a few months of that final confrontation, but I don't think it was my imagination that Smokey seemed to run inside every time we opened our garage door after that.