Sunday, August 15, 2010

Bathroom Monologue: A Biography Inaction

Only a couple of them could say they'd heard of Gerard Blune before his family came to close the estate. Black cars streamed away from dusky doors, and a non-entity of a neighbor was done. For his life on Cairo Lane, Mr. Blune was only one more ugly car driving by at 5:30 and a reliable spring of peanut butter cups on Halloween. The rest of his life there was to be defined in the months after it ended.

The first snow fell a week later. Nobody shoveled the sidewalk and most were disgruntled to find the massive drifts plows had left completely burying their walkways. Previously neighbors assumed that the town shoveled it all out.

When the Route C school bus broke down, the PTA was disgruntled to learn that their yard had no mechanic on payroll. Apparently there wasn't any mechanic in the district licensed to service for that class of vehicle. Previously a G.H. Blune had done maintenance for free, maintaining his license at his own expense. One bus driver claimed the Samaritan had worked big vehicle maintenance during The War.

At the school play, one voice was missing in the typical chorus of laughter. People felt it where they didn't recognize it.

When ice took out the power in December, the neighbors waited for it to return. It was a bitter cold night before they realized no one called the outage in.

Opening night of the biggest movie of the year, one voice was missing form the typical chorus of gasps. More people felt that.

Spring came and the new man in that house didn't mow as often, nor as evenly. The lawn had once looked as manicured as a football field at kickoff. Neighbors on either side of the house picked up their lawn care in Blune fashion. They spited him so much that they almost made the mistake of not introducing themselves.

5 comments:

  1. "You don't know what you've got till it's gone" so says the song and Blume's neighbors.
    Loved it.
    Mary

    ReplyDelete
  2. Great piece. The unappreciated glue holding the entire neighborhood together only gets noticed when it's missing.

    Nicely done!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I enjoyed this one, Mr Wiswell. I think only the humblest men and women are appreciated more once they are dead.

    PS: Sentence 3 has an oops of some kind: perhaps a missing word.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Aw, poor guy. Beautifully written piece, too. It's amazing how little people appreciate their neighbours these days.

    ReplyDelete

Counter est. March 2, 2008