Living Next Door To That Guy
A Geezer’s Notebook, By Jim Foster
Have you ever wondered what Noah’s neighbours were thinking when they saw him out in his driveway building an ark?
“What in hell is Noah doing now? Last year it was a damned deck. Two years ago, he moved his outhouse indoors. What next?”
We all have a neighbour like that. Here we are average guys whose idea of home renovations is to wipe the bird poop off the canvas deck chair, and who moves in next door – a handyman with more chaise lounges and patio sets than Canadian Tire – and all home made of course. If we are considering buying a wading pool for the kids to paddle in – the green plastic kind with the slide like a turtle’s back. This yo-yo will build an Olympic-sized aquatic centre complete with whirlpool, sauna and ceramic-tiled shower room.
You know the neighbour I’m talking about; the guy who putters from dawn to dusk mowing this and pruning that until every blade of grass and bush looks like it’s been swiped off the cover of Better Homes and Gardens. Meanwhile your place looks like dandelion heaven.
His wife entertains her bridge club ladies on the garden patio with chamomile tea and those little rolled-up sandwiches with the crusts cut off – the kind with asparagus tips and some kind of Philadelphia Cream Cheese. Your wife puts a bag of beer nuts and a six-pack of beer on the kitchen table.
A long time ago Noah was that guy. When he wasn’t praying or puttering around his prize-winning rose bushes, he was hitching up the bullocks to take a load of homemade brownies to the local food bank. A regular jerk to have living next door.
If we had been his neighbours, our wives would be harping on about how Noah’s lawn looks so green and ours is nothing but crabgrass. And why didn’t we get off our fat duffs and put up the clothesline? It blew down when the tornado came through, along with the front porch. You never got around to re-building either.
So now Noah is building a boat. If one of our other neighbours starts nailing a couple of planks together to make a rowboat, it wouldn’t upset us because we know he’ll never finish it. He’ll hammer away until someone offers him a cold beer. The boat will sit forever in his yard with no bottom next to the snowmobile and bald tires on his lawn. But this time it’s that damned Noah and his ‘boat’ is the size of the H.M.C.S. Bonaventure and getting bigger. Every day the old geezer will be out there sawing and pounding away. Naturally we panic because we know that someday soon he’ll actually finish it and sure as God made little green apples, the missus will want one.
Strangely enough, there’s not a whole lot in the Bible about the boat project. There was only Noah working and as far as we know he never graduated from a Georgian College carpentry course, he just winged it. The rest of the neighbours couldn’t put a barbecue together without a team of engineers and Noah builds a cruise ship. The sucker was 300 cubits long; which by my calculations would be halfway from Barrie to Collingwood. I’m still trying to figure out metres; now I have to worry about flippin’ cubits.
Where did Noah get the cash to build an arc? It was built of gopherwood you know and gopherwood doesn’t come cheap. Plus he’d need a whack of nails and they’d have to be copper-plated. Must have cost a fortune, 30 talents American at least. We know from the Scriptures Noah was broke. In April he’d been hauled before Revenue Mesopotamia. They cleaned him out big time. His missus, Gladys, had been working at Malachi’s Milk Store on the weekends and he didn’t report it. But still he somehow bought this stuff.
I’ll bet the local lumberyard had one of those Don’t Pay Till Next Year sales. Noah charged it! And why wouldn’t he? The planing mill would be 40 feet under the drink when it came time to pay the bill and he knew it.
In truth his neighbours weren’t all that upset. Noah threw a big boat-launching party and they were all invited. Things went back to normal fairly quickly although a few hangovers were still pounding a week later. But everything changed the morning all the neighbours on the block thought there was an earthquake. During the two by two loading operation, a pair of elephants fell in love on Noah’s front lawn.
(Image Supplied)
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