A STORY WORTH TELLING TH
LEON ALDRIDGE
“Being a good neighbor is an art which makes life richer.” — Gladys Taber
The tall, gray-haired man walked toward me from the house next door. I was copying the phone number from a “For Sale” sign on a lot at Lake Murvaul in East Texas.
I had no idea I was meeting one of the best neighbors I would ever have.
This was years ago, before the “art of neighboring” was killed by 5-inch glowing rectangles and buried under a pile of unread texts. Before phone screens replaced the loving attention we once gave to family, friends and folks living next door.
“Looking to buy a place on the lake?” the old fellow quizzed me. “Good fishin’ here.”
His thinning hair and weathered face revealed his age, but his smile, twinkling eyes and curiosity hinted at a much younger heart.
“I love this lake, wouldn’t live anywhere else. Retired and moved here from Dallas 17 years ago,” he said.
I bought the property and that summer while turning it into a new home, “Mr. Bill” made the time and the work tolerable.
“How ’bout a glass of tea?” he sometimes called out.
“Come on, sit down,” he always laughed. “I got a new joke for you.”
No one guffawed louder or longer at Mr. Bill’s jokes than he did.
Then he might offer, “Come over for supper later. Katherine’s fixin’ pork chops. I might save you one.”
After we moved in, Mr. Bill and Miz Katherine quickly “adopted” my children. He timed his afternoon coffee with the arrival of the school bus.
“Y’all better get over here,” he’d call out to my kids. “Katherine just made cookies.”
“Bug” was the name my daughter, Robin, selected for the terrier mutt she adopted, but Bill called the puppy “Bitsey.” The dog soon became Bill’s “bus alert.”
Good hearing was not a requirement for Bill’s fishing, however. You could hear his boat on many mornings, heading out at full throttle before the sun came up on the cove.
“Catch anything?” I’d quiz him later.
“Naw,” he would say with a laugh. “One tried to jump on my hook, but I talked him out of it.”
More than one Saturday morning, he was at my back door.
“Got any coffee? Katherine won’t let me have any more. Says I don’t need it. And if she calls, don’t you tell her I’m over here,” he’d tell me with a grin.
Miz Katherine eventually decided it was time to move closer to family in Fort Worth.
“Crazy woman,” Bill said, shaking his head. “I came to this lake to stay.”
He protested to all, except Miz Katherine, of course. Up went the “For Sale” sign. “Where ya’ going?” I asked one day, seeing him heaving suitcases into the car.
“To see the kids,” he replied. Looking around to make sure Miz Katherine wasn’t within earshot, he smiled and said, “If anyone stops to look at the house, tell ’em it’s eaten up with termites, the roof leaks and the plumbing’s shot.”
“Gotcha,” I said with a chuckle. “Have a good trip.”
The little place next door eventually sold, and they moved away. About that time, opportunity called me to Boerne in the Hill Country.
Even today, however, having been away from that lake for many years, when someone talks about how we used to have good neighbors, I still think about one who made my life richer — a neighbor always looking for another cup of coffee, laughing and saying, “I’ve got a new joke for you.”
Contact Aldridge at [email protected]. Other Aldridge columns are archived at leonaldridge. com.
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