July 11, 2013 - Neighbors

Driving from Ohio to Putnam County allows ample time for reflection. Today I did the entire drive non-stop in 5.5 hours, the quickest ever.  I didn't get started until about 5:30 because of housework, job related work, and tying up loose ends at the old house.

I found out that my son thinks that my mowing the yard is hilarious, as he sat in the stroller while I pushed and bagged the yard one last time.  I also discovered that many of the neighbors were taking note of everyone who has come into my house since it went up for sale.  They all wanted to know which of the many people bought the house, and I didn't have any idea.  When a few of them found this out, our conversation pretty much ended, seeing that it was a waste of their time to keep talking to someone they would likely never see again. There are a couple neighbors, namely the Steels and the little lady next door, who I will definitely miss... but only because I have a relationship with them.
The idea of what it means to be a neighbor kept floating in my mind as I drove back home tonight.  I watched this TED talk earlier today, which is probably part of the reason it was in the forefront of my mind http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30figZ5MAbk .  The speaker in that talk said something about neighborhoods that have front porches and detached garages, which didn't make sense to me until I thought about the neighborhoods that I had recently lived in.  I had to make an effort to see my neighbors in both places, because they could just drive into their home, close the garage door, and never actually see me or me see them.  It was much more natural to interact with the neighbors in the summer, when they were outside or had parked their cars outside and might actually make eye contact with you across the street, forcing a wave and perhaps a face-to-face meeting.  In fact, the neighbors that we are closest with are the ones who had their garage too full of stuff to use for parking their car.
So this made me think about the situation where we are about to live and how people interact and form relationships.  My nearest neighbor is about a half mile away.  You have to take time to be a neighbor and then build those relationships through interactions in the community.  I think that the reason that a trip to Walmart, Kroger, the county fair, the post office, the high school football game,or even the gas station takes so long here is because you have to build in the time for building "social capital."  Even the experience of going to church fees different in the country because that might be the only social interaction that some people out here get all week.  The strength of the community in Putnam County is not build on the front porches or in the driveways of the people who live here, as it is in urban areas, but it is built through an active effort on the part of everyone to know each other and invest in each others lives.