The Neighbor

“I moved into the neighborhood a little over a year ago,” he told me as we sat together at the local coffee shop, “I used to come here to this shop and talk with the people here. I noticed that they were struggling, and I decided that I wanted to help.” 

By using the word ‘struggling’, he was making a little bit of an understatement. This neighborhood, like many others in this major U.S. metropolis, was in need of just about everything. There was trash on the street, a third of the houses were abandoned or burned down, and there weren’t any safe places for the locals to spend their time. Fast forward five years, after a group of people committed to the neighborhood’s rejuvenation moved in, and we are looking at a different place; we are sitting in a different place. Forming the centerpiece of a three street intersection, and the neighborhood itself; the building we sit in holds a coffee shop with free wifi and a brand new market. Out of the market they offer affordable produce and a grocery co-op for locals. Completing the main areas of need, a connected thrift store sits in the basement of a church a half-mile down the road. 

“Why did you move here?” I asked. 

“This neighborhood needs diversity, culture, and multiple income brackets. We need businesses. We need economic development. We need a neighborhood that we here can take pride in. We should have neighborhoods where everyone cares about each other.” 

He tells me that when he first moved to the neighborhood, his desire was to just help in small ways. He cleaned up trash around the neighborhood, and got “No Dumping $300 Fine” signs to put up in spots with a lot of trash. The $300 fine is legitimate, he says, but even if it wasn’t he still would still have put up the sign. Within the first few weeks after he moved there, he planted five top of the line cherry maple trees near the intersection across the street from the coffee shop. Each night for five nights one tree disappeared until there weren’t any left. He watched it happen, helpless to stop it, and then he realized the problem. He replanted five much cheaper trees and they’ve been there almost a year now. “Small things can help big” he tells me laughing in an accent that tells me he's not from around here. 

“Where were you, before you moved in to this neighborhood?” I asked.

He grew up in the northeast, which explains the accent, but moved to this city for work more years ago now than he can count. He worked most of his later years for a sign store, installing signs for small businesses, and still does about five hours a week for them, even though he is “semi-retired” now (his words, not mine; as I would note that he works as hard or harder than anyone I know, he just doesn’t get paid for it). Years ago, along with his catholic parish, he started a food truck that visited the same at risk neighborhood every Saturday. Along with food he would bring other things that he knew they needed — shoes, clothes, and other things. Over time, it got so when he arrived the people in the neighborhood would shout out, “The Doctor is here!” “You learn so much from them” he said. 

“How long were you doing that?” I asked. 

“14 years, until they shut it down one day. A new priest came to the church and wanted to move the food truck closer to serve neighborhood around the church building.” He sighs, “that hurt me…. I don’t do things unless I can commit to them.” 

“That’s still a long time,” I say. 

“Yes, it was a good time. We grew from about four people going out every Saturday to about 20, and we’d spend time with those people there. We gave them hope, and they needed hope.” 

I noted that he didn’t talk about service like a chore, or a good deed. He talked about it as if it was life blood; something that helps both the server and the served. That’s one of my favorite things about the neighborhood and the effort that is going on in that square mile. Each of the folks who moves in, doesn’t do so under the guise of trying to “help them.” Instead, they pass around a shared belief, encapsulated in a single statement, that is causing more powerful and deeper changes: “The best way to help someone else,” they say, “is to make their problems, your problems.” 

A year after moving to the neighborhood, he now does far more than picking up trash (though I am sure he still does that a lot, he just wouldn’t tell me). He is the volunteer case worker on Sunday evenings for the local zip code. “They call all the time though,” he notes again laughing, “Sunday night is just when I answer the voicemails and plan out what I will do for the week.” There are too many calls to help them all so he picks a few of the worse cases and schedules a time to sit down with those folks during the week. He told me he’d met a woman with a few children who didn’t have power a couple weeks ago, and just the other day he mentioned meeting a 79 year old gentleman who had been without power for two weeks. “That shouldn’t happen,” he notes in a somber tone, “but the power company around here is great, if you call, they help you figure it out.” On top of calling the power company for people, he helps them write budgets, and introduces them to services that they qualify for. It was here that he offered a thought, as if I was asking him why he does this. “Some people throw money at problems, but they still don’t get it. You have to get out there. You have to… to touch.” 

“Once you get out of your comfort zone, you find out that you start to care about people. It’s in your heart to care, but you don’t know it.” 

“Thank you for all that you do here,” I say, feeling that like I’ve paid a penny for a three course meal. 

“I wasn’t always like this,” he responds. “You can’t help everyone, so what you have to do is, you use what you have to make a difference. My heart isn’t great, so I try to take every day to the fullest.” 

Mission accomplished, I think.