Do You Really Know Your Neighbors?
When I was a kid living in the Chicago Suburbs, I knew most all of my neighbors by name. The kids we all knew by first names & the parents were all referred to as Mr. or Mrs. Last Name.
We had block parties twice a year & we all got together for a big feast, fun and conversation. We brought food over to the different tables for everyone to try and we knew who made some of the foods we liked and made every effort to go over there, say hello to our neighbors and we asked if they needed anything like chairs or paper cups. We shared in our bounty and our neighbors shared back.
Most of us knew what our neighbors did for a living or at least we knew what jobs they were good at. If they were outside working on a project our parents might say to us, ‘Go help Mrs. Loftis or hold that ladder for Mr. Sykora’ and we knew if we needed help we could get it because our neighbors all helped each other.
When fall arrived we would rake leaves and it was no big deal to do the extra part of my neighbor’s yard next to our house.
When winter came around we had our own little enterprise of shoveling sidewalks and driveways for a few dollars but mom always told me to go shovel Mrs. Loftis’s sidewalk and porch for her. She was an old woman and couldn’t do it herself and I always did it because I really liked that little lady and her cat.
As the years went by we lost some of our neighbors, new kids came and went. It seemed that by the time I was a teenager more and more of the neighbors kept to themselves. We no longer knew their names or what type of job they had. These new neighbors didn’t work on their homes; they hired people to do the work. They never came out to the block parties or made conversation as you passed by, just a simple hello if even that.
I always try to get to know my neighbors when I move into a new place. I try to strike up conversations with them, even if it’s just to talk about the weather. But these days it seems to be a bit tougher. Some people don’t seem to want to know their neighbors anymore and that to me is sad.
When times are tough like they are right now, it would be a very good thing to know your neighbors. Instead of having to hire someone to fix something, wouldn’t it be better and cheaper if you knew which neighbor had the skills you needed. You could strike up a conversation with them and trade your knowledge with each other. Help one another; teach one another how to do these jobs around the house. And here’s the real kicker, when you all help each other everybody wins. With money being tight these days it can really be a benefit to everybody if we all help one another, be neighborly and form a true Community.
Think about this. If a disaster strikes your area, if things went very wrong in your neighborhood, do you know who you could depend on and for what?
If you’re part of a real Community, a friendly neighborhood where we all knew one another, your chances of getting through any disaster improves dramatically, because those aren’t just people struggling out there, those are your neighbors and you know their names!
Article by: Ben (Capt) Cook – captcook999@gmail.com
