I moved into my little brick duplex in 1990. It was located on the outskirts of a small but disturbing city, but it was still inside of the city line!

When I first moved in, it was as if the neighborhood still existed in the 1960's; It was like going into a time warp! Everyone was the original owner and the funny part was, everyone was synchronized like clockwork to their chore God! When I look back, I think that someone should have baked me a cake to welcome me to the neighborhood.

The first month that I lived in my house, I noticed that there seemed to be a designated day for everything; On sundays, everyone washed their cars. On Mondays, all the women washed their windows. On Tuesdays, all the women scrubbed their front door steps and so on, until Saturday came.

Saturday to me, was a day to sit back and watch some television, drink a beer and plan something good for the evening; But when I looked out of my window, I noticed that all the men, were spending half of their day, mowing and edging their lawns and clipping away at their one-or-two, Azalea bushes.

I found all these rituals very strange and amusing; I could cut and edge my lawn in half an hour, besides, each of our yards were no bigger than three picnic blankets sewn together!

All the houses on my street were divided by chest high, chain link fences. This was the perfect sociable climate for my neighbors; They loved to gather and stand around, talking to each other from inside of their property lines.

I did however enjoy the annual race for the ripest tomato; When Mother's day came around, all of my neighbors, myself included, would rush into our yards and start digging furiously. The object was to plant about five or six different varieties of tomato plants after the last frost and nurture them well.

Mr. Rawlings, to my left, always cheated with some kind of glowing concoction, that he fed to his tomatoes, early, every morning. The ultimate nod and a wink would be given to the first person to have a ripened tomato by July 4th! Needless to say, Mr. Rawlings won!

Anyway, I loved my Sunday crossword puzzles and in the spring and summer mornings, I liked to sit outside and rack my brains over them. However, this was impossible to do, because my neighbors wanted to help me!

No longer could I think aloud and stare at the sky with the pencil poised at my lips; The answer would be shot at me from five different directions!

One day, I got really annoyed and climbed into

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