Let me tell you a couple of stories about my neighbors. One day, when my dad was in his mid-70s, he was at the local grocery store picking up something to grill. When the cashier rang him up, my dad patted his pockets only to discover that he had driven to the store without his wallet.
The person in line behind him was my neighbor, and even though at that point we had only been neighbors for a short time, he recognized my dad from a chance meeting they had in my driveway. Without hesitation, my neighbor pulled out his wallet and paid for my dad’s groceries.
That’s just the kind of person he is, and it’s the kind of family they are.
They volunteered at their children’s school and with their kids’ sports teams, they are heavily involved at a mission, they take out another neighbor’s trash every Thursday, and are active in local political campaigns. They chat with my kids, pet my dog, and would give a random stranger the shirts off their backs. We have spent hours talking as we shovel snow off our driveways or clean up soccer balls in our back yards.
They are the kind of people that you are glad to have at the soul of your neighborhood and community.
Back in September, I planted a Harris-Walz sign in my yard. Within a couple of days, my neighbors had a Trump-Vance sign in their yard. This is our fourth presidential election cycle as neighbors, so there were no surprises here. The last few elections have seen us standing outside our polling station, greeting people before they enter and asking them to cast their votes for opposing candidates, while we chat cheerily with each other.
I believe, in the deepest parts of my mind, that they are wrong to offer their support to Trump. I am sure they feel the same way about me supporting Harris. I am not going to pretend that I see some moral equivalency here. This is not like Obama versus McCain: two good people with different ideas. Trump has repeatedly shown us that he has no morals at all and has, by his own admission, only concepts of ideas.
But this is not a column about Trump, so let’s move on to the second story.
The other day I had my car inspected. When it was done, the mechanic dropped it off in my driveway. He often picks up or drops off vehicles in our neighborhood because we are right around the corner from him.
Sometimes he walks back to his shop. Sometimes a customer drives him back. Sometimes he has a guy from the shop pick him up.
Anyway, he dropped my car off, leaving his invoice in the passenger seat, then, on his way out of my yard he plucked out the Harris-Walz sign. He walked next door with it and stuck it in my neighbors’ yard. Then he plucked out their Trump-Vance sign and hid it behind their mailbox.
My neighbors are also longtime customers of his — in fact, they are the ones who recommended him to us— and later that day, we all had a laugh about how Al was messing with us.
(As an aside: what I love most about this story is that this mechanic knows his customers so well and has such a good relationship with us, that he will drop off our cars with unpaid invoices in them, mess around with political signs, and then walk back to his shop. I honestly hope he never retires.)
What all of this teaches me is that, regardless of our political leanings, regardless of how much politicians and irresponsible social media users are trying to pit us against each other, regardless of how much traditional media seeks to amplify our differences, we really are one country, filled with different ideas about how to move forward with the common goal that we should stay united and, at least in real life, treat each other with kindness and respect.
No matter who wins this election, I am still going to be lucky to share a neighborhood with my neighbors and our local mechanic. Political views are only a tiny fraction of who we are, and the rest of who we are can make for great neighbors.
Source: Berkshire mont