Spanky and His Gang

Ichabod and I used to live by the lakeshore here in Michigan. It was a nice house, but the railroad track ran right through the yard. It was 25 feet from the front corner of the house. The house was in a neighborhood that used to be a more poor section. This town doesn’t have a “bad” section. I felt safe walking there any time of the day or night by myself. By the time that we moved there the neighborhood was getting be much nicer.

Anyway, just up the tracks from our house was a teeny little house that wasn’t even on the road. You had to drive up beside the tracks to get to it. Not that most of the people who ever lived there had cars. It probably used to be some building for the railroad.

Our first neighbor there was a woman who was very heavy and had bad health problems. Not really sure what happened but she moved suddenly. Maybe because of her health.

After a (blessed) period of vacancy Spanky moved in. His name was Kenny but he introduced himself as Spanky. He was in his forties, had a very gruff voice, and had probably been in prison at one time or another.

He didn’t have a car and must have walked to his second shift job. The loonies and drunks from around the neighborhood would hang out there all weekend. I really mean all weekend. They would sit in his yard all day and all night drinking beer and discussing life. That part we could handle.

One night, though, when he came home from his second shift job on a warm summer night, he started blasting his music. We didn’t have air conditioning and had our window open. It was after eleven o’clock at night.

Well, we fumed and waited, hoping he’d turn it down. Ichabod is usually a pretty cool, calm, rational guy. However by this time he was livid. He went over and pounded on Spanky’s door. Ichabod told him to be quiet. Spanky was drunk and didn’t take too well to being yelled at to turn down his music. Not only was he not going to turn it down, he was going to turn it up.

Ichabod came home and called the police. They came fairly soon, not much crime here, remember? We could hear Spanky telling them to come on in, they wouldn’t find any drugs. They finally got him to turn off the music.
After the cops left, Spanky came out in the yard. He was yelling that this was war and we’d never sleep again. The next time we saw him (it was daylight) he apologized and said he wasn’t really such a bad guy. Except that he kept doing and we had to keep calling the police. Thank goodness he finally moved, too. Marty moved in after that but that’s a whole ‘nother story.