Saturday, September 20, 2008

Mom's Take on the Neighbors


On her blog, my mother has explained the origin of the tape of the obnoxious neighbors, the one I used in the multimedia piece earlier in the week.

Mom says:

"I had complained to the police about the noise but usually it quieted down around the time they drove up, although there were a few times in which a fight was in progress and they actually hauled someone off to the police station. But the screaming and fighting continued, especially on weekends when it went out past 1 o'clock in the morning, making sleep difficult.

So I decided to make tapes of the noise and take them down to the police station and have a talk with the captain. It turned out that I never had to go there. They arrested Billy for firebombing a car. But first they had to find him.

He had climbed onto the roof, crossed over to the hatch-door in my roof (which a painter had failed to lock), and hid in my attic. I heard someone in the attic, didn't know it was him... terrified, I locked myself in the bedroom, pushed a dresser against the door, and called the police.

The dispatcher took my address. "The police are outside your house," she said. "They are there to arrest your neighbor." I looked out the window and sure enough, several cruisers were out there.

"He's in my attic!"

I moved the dresser back, flew down the stairs and let in the officer who was at my door by that time. He brought in a police dog. He put up a ladder to the attic door.

"Billy, come on out! I know you don't want this dog coming in after you."

That was true. They took Billy away and he went to jail for a few years. By the time he got out, I had moved across town to a single-family home."

2 comments:

Marie Javins said...

AND we'd gotten an unlisted phone number and left no forwarding information anywhere, as I recall.

I don't think you could do that anymore. The internet has made it so much easier to find people. It's almost impossible to keep your address or phone number private anymore.

Though if you have enough former addresses, you can confuse searchers.

Ed Ward said...

Somehow -- call it a hunch -- I don't think the Billys of 2008 would have internet access or the presence of mind to do a search.