"Good fences make good neighbors." according to the esteemable Robert Frost. I, however, have an addendum to this sentiment of what makes one a good neighbor, I say "Throwing excellent parties makes awesome neighbors!".
A couple ten acre parcels down our driveway lives our most colorful neighbors. By colorful I mean that these people possess an almost envious amount of joie de vivre. A couple years after I moved to my patch of North Idaho, these folks showed up and over the course of a few years, turned a run-down former meth-trailer-topia into a golf green, party-having paradise. The husband of the most marvelous pair is the greenskeeper for a local golf course, so the dude can rock turf care and maintenance. The wife is a warrior. She led a petition to annex our section of the county to the neighboring school district so the kids only have to go 3 miles to school instead of 15 and 20. It was during that campaign that I learned that my neighbor lady is no wilting wallflower, she charges right into the fray.
Of course, their exuberance has drawn a few detractors over the years, and there are some strained feelings between them and some of my neighbors, especially seeing how they just turned their beautiful place into a venue. Life in my section of North Idaho is anything but dull I tell ya.
Explanations and character paintings aside, every Labor Day weekend my fun neighbors throw a weekend long party of excellence. Now, until this year I have never gone, usually because of a myriad of reasons, most dealing with the children and just getting home from the state fair, but this year was different because I had promised to go earlier in the summer when queried about it.
The nice thing about the Labor Day party is that my neighbors get live bands for the event. I honestly look forward to swinging in my hammock every Friday and Saturday evening of Labor Day weekend and listening to everything from Sweet Caroline to *Keep Your Hands To Yourself" every year. The event's music takes me back to family parties when I was a kid...
This year however, my hubs, and assortment of teenagers, including my own, and I wandered down the driveway to the party. As it was just down the way, I slapped my camp chairs into the back of my daughter's Toyota Tacoma, and then I put my cooler in the bucket of my John Deere tractor and we drove John Boy to the fete. Arriving to a party in a tractor....soooooo cool! And I got to check another item off of my bucket list.
The first order of party business was slip and slide kickball. There was a caveat: adults had to be in costume and have a drink. All the kids were clad in shorts and swimwear, the adults though, they were dressed like this:
I think I ruptured something from laughing when I watched the T-rex slide into the kiddie pool that was first base. Somehow, several gallons of water got trapped inside his costume and it bounced around like the water in the back of James May's Volvo station wagon on that The Grand Tour episode where they hauled fish across Africa in cars. I died.
And for the next few hours I died laughing repeatedly as I sat in a camp chair, sipping iced tea out of a quart Mason jar. I even got called upon to conduct ostrich flintlock surgery with Gorilla Tape. The enthusiasm on display by the increasingly inebriated adults was just glorious. The pitcher, a fine creature named Boobra Walters was super hilarious, and the opposing team's pitcher kept feeding his raptor beer and then berated the poor creature on its performance. I felt sorry for the wee thing.
Another highlight was the Energizer Girl. There was this five year old creature, clad in sheep print leggings and a tutu dress who went hard for over 9 hours. I have only seen one other feat of hyperactivity and that was my cousin Eric pretty much every day. This girl though, she had staying power. She got in a water balloon altercation with my son and another teen boy. So it was a freshman and a sophomore against a kindergartner. I knew they were doomed with she laid waste to my son with a balloon to his back, caused him to slip and fall, and then to add insult to injury, she snatched up a discarded beer and poured it into my son's askew hat. That girl's destined for things.
Later, during the band time, she came up to me, materializing out of the dark like a mini-banshee of almost terror. "I have a snake!" she announced proudly, thrusting the baby garter snake in my face.
*"He's lovely," I replied, "and I bet he is ready for bed, don't you think?" After watching the heathen all day, I knew I had to be tactical in my approach, and raised my eyebrow towards my daughter who was sitting next to me, who immediately jumped up and offered to show the girl where the snake's room was in a rock feature across the lawn.
Apparently my unflappability drew the creature's attention, because an hour later when I rose to take my over-tired self home, she materialized again and asked if I was going home. After explaining to her that I indeed was because I had animals to feed, she flipped her pigtails over her shoulder and stated she would, "miss me."
I have been checking over my shoulder ever since.
Up until leaving though, I sat in my chair, noshed on slow-smoked for 18 hours brisket, and listened to rock, country, and blues music courtesy of a local band, My Own Worst Enemy. It was glorious. Okay, I might have got up and danced vigorously a time or two. I can't resist it when someone mimics casting a fake fishing pole at me, I get reeled in every dang time....
Our host and hostess, clad in a raptor rider and ostrich rider costume are two of the most fun people I have ever met, and judging by the amount of people at the festivities, they are sincerely and truly adored. All I know is they make my rural neighborhood a lot more fun and exciting, and to paraphrase Squirrelly Dan, "That's what I appreciates about them."