The Night Light
In the neighborhood where we lived in Atlanta, many of the residents were either original owners of their 60s era ranch homes, or they were the children of the original owners. Only a few of us were not.
There was an older, and original, couple who lived across the street, Bob and Sue Grant (not their real names). Our next door neighbor was The Rat, a rock and roll radio DJ of some note, who had known the Grants his entire life because he was one of the children who inherited his home from his parents, original owners. He told us stories about Bob, a World War II vet who was very friendly but sometimes impatient with young folks like the DJ when he was growing up.
On one occasion, the DJ and some of his teenage friends were raising a ruckus. Loud music, shouting in the street, riding skateboards and blocking what little traffic turned into the quiet neighborhood. Bob yelled at the kids to settle down and clear the street. Naturally, they ignored him. He went back into his house and emerged with his Army issue carbine and cracked off a few shots into the air. The kids got the message and, concerned that Bob had lost his mind, scattered for safety.
That was many years before we moved into our house, and we never saw Bob get any crazier than being a cranky old man, common for people his age (as I know because I am now the age he was then). Sue was a sweet grandmotherly type and attempted to reel Bob in when his crankiness surfaced.
At the time, we had three black Labrador Retrievers, two aging and one a 9 year old permanent puppy, Ranger. Ranger learned how to escape the fenced back yard, so I was forever laying trenches of concrete under gates and staking down the bottom of the fence where he dug holes and slithered under. More than once, he went walkabout and returned in a couple of days, his stomach bloated with garbage from who knows where. There were occasionally steak wraps from a grocery meat department in the backyard as evidence of his consumption. Once, we had to bail him out from the pound. He had been there three days, halfway through his final countdown.
Eventually we succeeded in preventing his wandering by keeping him inside most of the time when we were not home.
Of course, Bob had seen Ranger walking the neighborhood a few times when Ranger had escaped. So it was logical that, when Bob’s motion-activated security light clicked on at 2:30 AM, and he saw the shadow of an animal -- what could have been a big cat, a possum, raccoon or Santa’s sleigh had it been Christmas -- crossing his back yard, he called me.
“This is Bob, across the street. You’re dog just set off my motion light in the back yard.”
“No, Bob, it was not our dog.”
“It looked just like him.” (Black dogs look alike to people who do not have Labradors.)
“No, Bob, it was not Ranger.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because he is lying beside me on the floor.”
“Oh. Well, I didn’t think it was him. I hope I didn’t wake you.” Click.
My wife and I mostly laughed about the incident. After all, there are worse types of neighbors you can have, like the ones who collect your mail while you are out of town and take your magazines to read on their toilet. Ugh.