A bunch of guys from the neighborhood had come to my house to play basketball and when we were taking a break between games, Ken Pelto said to me, “You’re the reason I moved into the neighborhood.”
Ken and his wife, Carol, had bought the house across the street from ours. He was a good neighbor and a heck of a basketball player. We nicknamed him “Hands” because his hands were so quick — he got a lot of steals.
Anyway, what Hands said made me happy and maybe a little proud.
“How’s that?” I said, encouraging him to brag on me a little more.
The Pelto’s had moved down here from up North somewhere, Wisconsin, I think, so he could work at the old Square D plant on U.S 64 East near Knightdale.
Hands told me that where he used to live he had to work in his yard all day on Saturday, and on Sunday, too, sometimes. If you didn’t keep your yard ship shape, he said, you got a visit from the neighborhood yard committee.
“I hate cutting grass, working in the yard all weekend,” he said. “And when I saw your yard I knew I wouldn’t have to, I knew this neighborhood didn’t have a yard committee.”
NOTE: The first time it snowed after they moved in Carol called my wife, Donna, and asked: “Where are the snow plows?” We still laugh about that on days when our street is covered with snow and ice and we can’t go anywhere: Where are those snow plows?
Coming Monday: You’re Gonna Hate Yourself