Our next door neighbor seems to be pranking his bank account. He seems nice enough, but he’s a puzzler. The front of his house appears to be collapsing, but his wife plants roses to climb a pricey arbor. A tenant accidentally set fire to the side of his house closest to ours and the neighborhood rallied around, but repairs were never completed. Siding flaps in the wind and insulation waves a friendly Hello!  Thus, it came as a tremendous surprise to us when a whirling crew of construction workers turned up to tear down the garage and rebuild it. They have been at it for days and they do good work.

The house looks awful, but that it still stands is so confusing. This detail is my favorite. The bulkhead door swung open one winter and the basement door wouldn’t have withstood an unswift kick. Nobody walked around the other side of the house to investigate roaring wind up the inside stairs for over a year. Finally, Pete picked up a stick and cinched it shut. This door has been locked this way long enough to celebrate lonely anniversaries.

I do not care much about property, but I worry about people whose motivations I don’t understand and whose actions don’t make sense. They jam my radar. I can’t work out why a guy would buy a house, let it crumble and rebuild his garage – unless what matters to him is at the end of his driveway. If I had to guess, I’d say he’s preparing for an inevitable divorce.