Why good neighbours make a difference in our lives

You’ll have to excuse me this time around for a venture into what some might condescendingly label the avenue of sappiness.

But I just can’t help myself after last week’s blast of this never-ending winter prompted an unsolicited hand from a neighbour to help me and my wife, a couple of quickly aging seniors (much too quickly, truth be known) clear the way through mammoth snowdrifts from the house to the road (and access to the civilized world).

Heather was armed with a shovel and I had a snow blower going full tilt, and we were making steady, but decidedly slow progress (even as I was wondering whether a cardiac care unit on standby might not be out of the question).

Then a neighbour meandered down from his driveway with his own machine and offered up the kind of simple solicitation so often heard (I like to think) in the rural areas of this smiling (now freezing) land of ours.

“Need a hand, Bob?”

N.L. GENEROSITY

Now, I’m sure there were similar offers of a shovel or snow blower here and there in St. John’s (although a niece of ours shared a disconcerting story of spending endless backaching hours digging out her car on a downtown street in the aftermath of the latest blizzard while younger men walked by, or stood and observed, oblivious to her needs; an aberration, hopefully).

But in places like Flatrock, where we live, and in other small communities throughout the province, I am convinced there still exists a cultural inclination to always have your neighbour’s back (so to speak), a trait that has disappeared in the self-centred and carnivorous environment in which much of society exists.

FORTUNATE WITH NEIGHBOURS

I couldn’t help but think how fortunate I’ve been that I’ve had, and continue to have, the type of neighbours who epitomize a slice of Newfoundland selflessness that’s become almost legendary (from the lowkey help of a snow blower or a chainsaw to the world renown “Come from Away” dramatics of Gander on 9-11).

The snow-blowing assistance the other day was anything but exceptional in the place we’ve called home for 28 years, and it would be easy, even subconsciously, to take such kindness of spirit for granted.

But we don’t.

The couple living right next door, close friends for a couple of decades now, have also helped us during and after blizzards, and are the neighbours every soul should have.

They are generous as all get out, whether it be in the form of a hammer and saw or engine repair endeavours to make up for my mechanically challenged ways, having two extra seats at the family table for us on special occasions and just being there in times of trouble.

GROWING UP IN GANDER

But, as I say, I’ve been blessed in the world of neighbours, right from the get-go, way back to the ’50s and ’60s growing up on Balbo Street in the aforementioned Gander, a town in which a helping hand was as much a part of the landscape as the international airport terminal (the 9-11 episode, it could be said, was a continuation of the community’s benevolent personality).

I recall our next-door neighbours, the Gillis family, taking it upon themselves to build a backyard rink that was deliberately and magnanimously extended into our own property. All hands could do a poor man’s imitation of Boom Boom Geoffrion, the back porch lights from both houses allowing the hockey to be played well into the night.

The Gillis crowd also had the first television on the street, and we, the Wakeham clan, were always welcome to wander into their living room to watch “The Lone Ranger,” even though the T.V. reception wasn’t all that great back then, and the “masked man” and Tonto would occasionally disappear into a snowy and blurry screen, not to be seen or heard from for several minutes, leaving us worried sick about the outcome of their fight with the bad guys in their black hats.

A couple of houses away lived Speed and Ida Baird, tremendous neighbours as well, with Mr. Baird attaining lifetime hero status with me and my buddies on the street when he blew a monstrous rat apart with a shotgun. Years later, Speed — he was no longer “Mister” Baird — got a kick out of my recall of the “killing on Balbo.”

RELIGIOUS DIFFERENCES PUT ASIDE

Although Gander was polarized to some extent by the denominational educational system — Catholics in one school, and “non-catholics,” as referred to by the narrow-minded R.C. doctrines, in the other.

Balbo Street knew nothing of such segregation; the religious beliefs of our neighbours, the Protestant Bairds, for example, were irrelevant.

Except on one occasion, when the Catholic-protestant differences provided, in a most innocent way, the gist of a story Mrs. Baird (or Ida, as I called her in later years) — an absolutely wonderful and loving wife and mother who just died recently at the age of 101 — just loved to tell.

Her son David and my brother Gerry, both around six years old at the time, were playing in the Bairds’ backyard one day when Mrs. Baird informed Gerry it was time for him to head home.

“David has to get dressed and go to Sunday School,” Mrs. Baird explained to Gerry.

My brother (who had a hard time pronouncing David’s name) became mildly upset, and declared:

“Dasid, ya know what I wish? I only wish you weren’t a Protestant.”

RECIPROCAL GENEROSITY

Laughs among neighbours, especially those laughs that seem to last a lifetime — I told the story to a couple of people at Mrs. Baird’s wake — are a decided bonus when you get along well with the crowd a house or two away, or just across a mutual piece of land.

But it’s the reciprocal generosity that really leaves a mark.

I was fortunate on Balbo Street.

We are fortunate in Flatrock.