When I was a kid, our family moved around a lot, but everywhere we moved, it never took long to get to know our neighbors. It didn’t matter if we were in an apartment building, a townhouse, a duplex, or what have you. It was just something that happened naturally.
As I became an adult and started being a functioning member of society (post street-life), and started living in places where neighbors existed, the “good neighbor” ideology seemed to be on the way out. However, this observation was true only for city living.
It wasn’t until I eventually moved to a smaller community that I noticed the opposite to be true. This was in the late 90s in Gibson’s Landing when I first noticed the difference. As new parents, our neighbors went above and beyond to lend a hand whenever we needed it—and sometimes even when we weren’t aware we needed it.
Years later, when I moved to Trochu, a small town in central Alberta, this became even more evident. I was a single parent with a child in grade 4. We moved there with very few possessions, wondering how we were going to make it work. Trochu had answers for our questions before we could even ask.
I soon knew my neighbors four houses down on either side of me, and even a few across the street. It wasn’t just the wave-hello kind of thing, but a stop-and-have-a-conversation kind of thing. I stayed in the same house for the first eleven years. I watched old neighbors leave and new ones come, and it was the same experience with the new ones.
Eventually, I moved to a different house around the corner and a few blocks away. I had the advantage of already knowing the neighbors from two households on the same block. I’ve been in this house for six years now, and out of the ten houses on my block, I am friends with the occupants of five of them. One of my neighbors recently moved, and the house is still unoccupied, while another house burned down almost two years ago.
There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for any of my neighbors if they asked, and I am certain if the situation were reversed, they’d be happy to reciprocate. I have what I call an “open door” policy, which means my door is closed to nobody. The rule is simple: walk in and identify yourself. Oh, and when I say "open door," I literally mean my door is open six inches, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 364 days a year. I close it and lock it only on Halloween.
I have neighbors who bake 15 pies and give them to everyone nearby, and knowing that I’m diabetic, they make one sugar-free just for me. I bake for some of my neighbors, while others mow my lawn and shovel my sidewalks in the winter. It’s just a different mentality in rural areas. I’m not saying this doesn’t happen in bigger cities, just not as often or as unselfishly.
There’s something to be said about Old School Neighboring.
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