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Do you ever look at your own neighbors for your stories or is it too real?

On my road:

A scientist who developed a synthetic polymer that reproduces the iris (or something like that). I think it's the substance that connects the iris to the eye (or something like that). He lives in a Swiss chalet-type house.

A "farmer" who amazes me the way he moves his stock around. One big pasture with lots of fences making smaller ones and always moving them around day to day. Okay, that's not all that interesting except to me. Horse and calf/pony and cow. Next day calf and cow/pony and horse. (?)

A family with a teenage son hell-bent on NASCAR and maybe gonna make it. Cars, numbers, car parts, sheds, tires, car parts, wrecked cars, cars with numbers. MECHANICS. Dogs. Our crashed car among them.

A family where everything still looks sad after their little boy hung himself (accidently) from a rope hanging frome a tree over an old car. I still remember the day my three-year-old son and I got stopped on our way to town by two kids in the road. "Dewayne got hanged yesterday." He did his homework and then went out to swing on the rope daddy had hung for the kids. He got up on the old car and grabbed the rope and swung round and round and round and round until he was totally twisted up. Somehow it got around his neck. A horrible accident. One of the kids said, "Daddy cut that rope down." They had a funeral for him with a horse-drawn coffin.

A rich chicken-broker who bush-hogs our land for a hobby when we're not here.

A family with a father who had Parkinson's Disease and planned his suicide so carefully so as not to make a mess and wrapped himself up in a plastic bag before he shot himself (so his family would not have to clean up the mess) and he would not have to suffer anymore. I've seen his two twin, blonde good-lookin' sons grow up to be young men. They have the prettiest and biggest azaleas on the road. I also remember when he buried my horse and wouldn't let me pay him. "But you lost your horse." Bless his heart.

Then there's the Christmas tree light guy. Several hundred thousand of them.

And a raccoon who sits on my tack house roof and smirks. On and on.

What's on your road?

Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]What's on your road?[/nq]
No one bush-hogging as a hobby.

Um. What's bush-hogging?

--

"I think everybody likes to see the fat girl get the hot guy and win." --John Waters

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Do you ever look at your own neighbors for your stories or is it too real? On my road:[/nq]
Suzy -

You don't live on a road. You live on "The Boulevard of Life and Death".

Only about a bajillion movie stories there, I guess.

Doug

Just a virtual guy... in a virtual world

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]What's on your road?[/nq]
Squished "el canejo" foo foos.

Oh, you didn't mean literally?

BTW, did anyone ever tell you that you can write? In one post you've given us eight story starters (if we just take them straight) and hundreds more with just a few twists, some intermingling and a little digging.

-- RonB "There's a story there...somewhere"

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]What's on your road?[/nq]
I live in coastal California--you only meet your neighbors in an earthquake, mudslide, fire, or if they've come to kill you.

Mysti

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]What's on your road?[/nq]
Let's see. There's a tiny little kiddie playground. There's an Iranian/Italian restaurant. A car body shop that the hoity-toity people who live here have tried in vain to get rid of -- but which they patronize when they ding their vulvas. I mean Volvos.

There's a cooperative art gallery. A fancy-schmancy restaurant that is reputed to serve good food, but I've never been in. Too staid for me. And a thriving visual arts centre which goes by the ultra-imaginative name The Visual Arts Centre.

Anda whole bunch of snow. Trees. Birds. Squirrels and raccoons.

No bush-hoggers but we did have George Clooney spend a day here a while back, shooting a scene from Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.

--

"I think everybody likes to see the fat girl get the hot guy and win." --John Waters

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]What's on your road?[/nq]
Well, there's Central Park West -- 20,000 apartments people with too much good luck -- which is either too much to write about or too little.

My current neighbors...

Michael Lang, the concert promoter who did the Woodstock Concert(s).

Charlie, an old guy in his 90s with 20 rusting cars and tractors in his front yard. His dad was the stone mason who built my house and also a perported Titanic survivor (story goes that he worked in the kitchen). He actually knew an escaped slave who lived at the back of my property when Charlie was a boy.

Liv Tyler.

Record producer named John Wonderling; had his walls lined with gold & platinum records for things I never heard of, but he lived in a barn. We shopped for Rickenbacher guitars together. He just fell in love, got married and died the first day of his honeymoon, in Paris. So now his barn is just sitting there empty.

A mink farmer. Don't know much about him.

The park ranger who runs the park that surrounds my house. He stops by now and then to tell us what he's seen that week (mostly bears, bobcats, coyotes, barred owls)

A guy who still harvests and sells native ginseng up the mountain across from us. He's really secretive and won't tell anybody where his secret stash is.

Jenny and Herb, across the street from him, who say they know where the ginseng is.

All-in-all... I think I get more material from my family. We're pretty spread out up here, so from the neighbors it's mostly just vignettes.

Alan Brooks ~~ A ******* with an Underwood

-- That's a salad dressing, innit?

~~ Important MWSM Documents -- The MWS FAQ: http://www.online-communicator.com/faqs.html

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]From the trenches *(Email Removed)* sent a runner with thisimportant missive...[/nq]
Q:> What's on your road? Q: Q:No one bush-hogging as a hobby. Q: Q:Um. What's bush-hogging? Q: Q: LOL! You're still pretty British, aren't you? -- The Peripatetic Samurai Robot!

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