let's talk more about the neighbors

Crazy Jim is crazy. He is like a man living on the bottom of the sea. He walks as if he is traveling over course sand. He slurs his body along, his slender limbs swimming in air, seemingly unrelated to each other. His blue eyes dance like nervous crabs and he only looks directly up to the sky or down at the ground when he speaks to you.  

He was a stone mason. Then he was in Vietnam. And after that I don't believe he was really anywhere or anything ever again.

I have seen him stand in the middle of 10th screaming wildly at ghosts only he can see. We listen to him shoot off fireworks and 'play' hours of amplifier feed back to detour the government from spying on him. 

I have seen him on calm days hanging over our fence to tease the kids playing in our yard, mowing his lawn in straight lines, walking his goat. 

Once, I had him graciously thank me. Presenting me with the gift of dog's head awkwardly carved from a block of concrete with mix-matched marbles as eyes. It was for doing one of the dumber things I have done around here. 

I grabbed his angry boxer off a small, black unfortunate corgi. I managed to free the corgi from the boxers mouth but I had accidentally gotten my hand badly tangled in the attacking dog's collar. 

It left me tied to a snarling dog whose dinner plans I had just spoiled. 

That was a fantastic moment. 

The dog and I looked at each other, each trying to decide what to do. Lucky for me the dog must have decided any human stupid enough to get in the middle of a dog fight must be crazy and being Jim's dog he knew not to mess with crazy. 

After I somehow managed to free my hand, minus some skin, he growled himself back into his own yard. And after someone told Crazy Jim what had happened he came over to say thank you for kicking the shit out of his dog without getting myself killed.

That was 2 dogs ago. Each one as equally mean as the other. But from the relative safety of the sidewalk in front of Jim's droopy wire fence you can watch his current dog wind up the wooden swing hanging from the tree in the front yard. After he gets it going the dog hops on and swings...no shit.

This weekend large balloons began appearing in the sky over 10th. I saw the first one Friday evening. 

They floated like beacons over the back fields reaching high, whipping in the wind against the thin line anchoring them down. 

The first one was black. The second, yellow. The third black with white, lace-like decoration all around.

I don't know what happened to the first and for all I know the third balloon may still be out there but I saw what happened to the second one. 

Late Saturday afternoon the kids in the field behind ours, working with shovels building bike jumps out of dirt & cardboard stopped digging.

They tried a number of ways to bring the big yellow balloon down. Throwing rocks and sticks. It arched and bobbed, teasing them. 

Finally, they threw a ball of string over the balloon's line capturing control of it. They pulled it to the ground and ran off with it. Within an hour a new balloon was in its place.

When the third balloon appeared I got curious. I walked out to the old tree stump in the back field to see if I might figure out where Jim was tying them. 

I stood on my tip toes peering over 2 sets of high wooden fences. Beyond the neighbor-to-the-north's weed patch yard and into Jim's. 


I shouldn't have been surprise at what I found. 

It was Crazy Jim dressed in all white, holding the string. Flying a balloon. 

Most likely, knowing Jim, he had been there the whole weekend, tending his line like a fisherman. 

A man at the bottom of the ocean fishing into the sky.