Our neighbor Jimmy passed away about six months ago. He had dementia and for the last six years of his life, a woman named Doris came to his house to take care of him. She was somewhat scatterbrained. At night he had a succession of nurse’s aides come and stay with him overnight. They never lasted that long because unfortunately for them Jimmy really came alive at night. And by that, I mean his paranoia and delusions and mania would take over.

For a few weeks, I thought that Jimmy must have some kind of wild animal or bird living in his house because at night I heard an unearthly screech. It woke me from a sound sleep. I thought at first something or someone was being murdered. The first time I heard it I ran across the street.” What’s going on, what’s that horrible noise?” The night caretaker said, “it’s Jimmy. Sometimes patients with dementia scream like that.”

Occasionally Jimmy would escape from his house and wander around the neighborhood. One beautiful spring morning I was outside working in my garden. And I saw Jimmy sauntering down the other side of Walnut Avenue in his pajamas and fuzzy slippers. He was wearing a Fedora with a peacock feather sticking out of it. He had a pistol strapped to his waist. I crossed the street and walk over to talk to him and assist him in getting back to his own home. “Hey, Jimmy, what’s up? What are you all dressed up for anyway?”

Jimmy said, “I found this hammer on the tree limb over there, I’m taking it home.”

And sure, enough Jimmy had a hammer in his hand. “That’s great Jimmy, let’s walk back to your house you must be a little cold in your pajamas?”

“No, no, no.”

“Well Doris will be worrying about you, and she probably has your breakfast ready.”

“Oatmeal?”

“Well, maybe let’s go and see if that’s what’s Doris is making.”

“OK.”

I take Jimmy across the street and knock on his front door. “Doris, I found Jimmy walking down the street in his pajamas and he was carrying a hammer. I pointed at the gun on his waist with my chin, Doris nodded her head with a knowing look and a smile of resignation.  She said, “No bullets.”

“Jimmy, come in and eat your breakfast before it gets cold. It’s your favorite, bananas and cream oatmeal.”

Jimmy is a nice man and a good neighbor. I felt bad when he developed dementia. He suffered from dementia for over six years. And then he passed away quietly during a quiet winter’s night.

After he passed away his house stood empty up until today. I heard he left the house to relatives. I hope they would start taking care of the house. After Jimmy developed dementia, he stopped taking care of the house. He hadn’t painted the house in years. And the green shutters hang askew. The grass hasn’t been cut for a long, long time. It looks like a jungle back there. There are piles of trash all over the front yard. And two old cars that haven’t been driven in years rusting in the driveway. The whole place is an eyesore. At one point Jimmy decided to clean out his garage. Apparently, he kept everything he ever bought during the thirty-some years he lived in his green shuttered house stored in the garage.

So about seven years ago Jimmy got it in his mind that he was going to clean out that garage and have a yard sale. Unfortunately, about two days before he scheduled the yard sale, he took a fall down the steps in the back and broke his arm and his ankle on his left side. Jimmy was never the same after that. He never bounced back.

And that enormous pile of stuff from his garage has been lying on his driveway behind the junk cars during three years of Spring rain, Summer heat, and winter’s snows. Some of it has blown down the street onto the neighbor’s yards. Some ended up in the street. And anything of value was picked through by mysterious scavengers in the dead of night. And the rest remains a memorial to a man who accumulated more stuff than he ever needed and saved for a rainy day when he might find a use for it. That day never came, it sits there as a cautionary tale to all who see it. Don’t buy things that you don’t need now and won’t need in the future no matter what a great deal it seems to be.

As I gaze across the street at Jimmy’s empty house. I feel it’s a sad reminder of my neighbor. I hope against hope that one fine day a moving van will drive up in front of Jimmy’s house and a family will disembark and move in and bring joy and laughter again to Jimmy’s house. And once again the house will become a home.

And unbelievably as I was wishing for a family to move across the street into Jimmy’s white house with the faded green shutters, I see a battered old school bus circa 1970 make a right turn down Walnut Avenue and down to 25 Walnut Ave, none other than Jimmy’s house. The bus is painted in psychedelic colors with huge daisies and butterflies all over it. And it bore on the driver’s side the legend, THE LOVE MACHINE.

I was so astonished I said out loud, ’What in the hell is that monstrosity?”

The folding doors of the psychedelic bus creak open and outpour a menagerie of people so out of place in this decade I thought I must be having a stroke. I rub my eyes and check my pulse. They seem to be in working order. And then it occurs to me that maybe I’m still asleep in my bed and this is some kind of dream or nightmare. Or perhaps a flashback to my youth when I spent my first year out of highschool hitchhiking across America from New Jersey to California and to Florida and back to New Jersey.

But then I hear loud music, emanating from the bus. The whole experience has a dream-like quality to it. It’s surreal. After all the people have debarked from the bus a huge dog leaps out the door bypassing the steps on the bus and landing on the sidewalk. At least I think it’s a dog or perhaps it’s a polar bear. I wouldn’t be surprised at all. At least ten people descend the LOVE MACHINE’S steps and two-step it to the front steps to Jimmy’s front door. I wouldn’t be the least surprised to see a dozen clowns leap out of the LOVE MACHINE’S windows and float to the front door by the giant bouquet of multi-colored balloons, followed by a platoon of monkeys in tuxedoes.

My curiosity is overpowering my common sense. I want to march across the street and knock on the front door. I take a few steps slowly forward and then all but run across the street. If I’m lucky I’ll wake up with a start and realize that it’s all a dream or maybe a nightmare.

I rush up the steps and bang lightly on the door. And when no one comes to the door immediately I bang a bit harder, I put some muscle into it and bang as hard as I can. I lean my torso over to the right and look through the living bay window. There are about ten people in there standing in a circle, holding hands. At first, I think they might be praying. Or asking for a blessing on their new home. But then I notice that they all have something in their right hands and smoke is wafting in the air. I think well maybe they’re smoking pot. But then I notice that four of the people are children. I think, good grief I hope not. And then it comes to me they are burning sage. And I remember someone told me that sage is burned to cleanse a space of negative energy, to promote healing.

As I stand there looking in their window, I think that’s not so bad, maybe it’s a good idea after all those years when Jimmy lived there with his dementia and confusion. The place probably could use a good cleansing. As I watch them, I decided this wouldn’t be the best time to meet my new neighbors. And I slowly back down the steps and quickstep it back to my side of the street and into my yard. I hope that they didn’t see me peeping in their window. Tomorrow I‘ll bring them a nice welcome to the neighborhood present, like muffins or something.

In the next few days, I spent a lot of time in my backyard. My new neighbors are busy moving into Jimmy’s house. At one point they all went out in their Love Machine bus and I snuck over to their front porch and left a dozen blueberry muffins on their front step with a card saying I was their neighbor across the street with the fence around their yard and my name was Mary Mc Clennon.

For the first few days, they cleared the house of all Jimmy’s worldly possessions. And oh boy, was he a collector. His hobby for years was going to yard sales and estate sales and buying all kinds of stuff. Things I couldn’t even put a name to. Well, if I did put a name to it, I would call it a bunch of useless crap.

After the week-long clean-out marathon they began bringing in their belongings. I can only say that it was an eye-opening undertaking. I can’t imagine what their intentions they have for some of the things that went through the front door. And occasionally was hauled up by ropes from the driveway to the balcony that was on the second floor of the house. At one point an old player piano is pulled through those double doors on the second floor. It looks like a player piano, that uses foot pedals and paper rolls.

I remember seeing a player piano in the Roxy Theater when I was a very young child.. A woman would come out on the stage before the movie. This was a Saturday matinee. And she would start by pedaling the piano, and a white paper with holes in it would automatically go through and it would play the music. I can’t imagine what they were going to do with all the weird things that went into Jimmy’s house. My curiosity is getting the best of me. I so wanted to go over there and ask them what they were planning on doing.

On the fourth day of their moving in I noticed a few new people were arriving at Jimmy’s front door with suitcases and some boxes. I guess the boxes held the rest of their belongings. How many people were going to be living in this three-bedroom house for crying out loud?

The next day I got my answer when two trailers show up and park in the backyard. The kind of trailers that people live in. According to my observations, it appears as if at the very least fifteen people are living in or outside Jimmy’s house currently. I can’t stand it any longer. I make up my mind that I’m going to march over there and find out what in world they’re up to in there. If they don’t give me a reasonable answer then I’m going to go to the township and make sure that they put a stop to it.

Early the next morning I walk into my kitchen to make something to eat and have a cup of coffee. I see a movement in my peripheral vision outside my kitchen window. I look across the street and low and behold there is a big crowd of people gathered outside my new neighbor’s front yard. It is at 7:45 am. And when I say big, I estimate there are about a hundred people out there.

And then I see what I can only describe as a line of Circus Performers coming out the front door of my neighbor. And they are following what looks like a polar bear at the head of the line. I kid you not. I rub my eyes because I think I must be having a hallucination or maybe I’m still asleep and having a weird dream. I pinch myself. Nope, they’re still there.

“What in blue blazes is going on?” I say to no one in particular. I don’t know if I should run across the street and read them the riot act. Or if I should go back to bed because it may be that I’m having a stroke or a hallucination of some sort. And then all of a sudden I hear a loud noise, boom, boom, boom.

And I see coming up behind the polar bear an eight-foot clown with a big drum that is suspended in front of his impressive stomach. And he’s hitting the drum with giant drum sticks with wooden balls on the end. And I hear boom, boom, boom once again. And then I hear tambourines being played by a little girl smoking a cigar. And the smoke from the cigar is wafting up into the air above her and spelling out Loonie Brothers Family Circus. The crowd begins to chant, “Loonie Brothers, Loonie Brothers, Loonie Brothers Circus.” And they all begin clapping and chanting at the same time.

“Good grief, “what’s next? I say out loud, “an elephant?”

I close my eyes for a brief moment, fearful that it might indeed be an elephant. And when I open my eyes again. I see a man dressed in hot pink tights and tiny lime green shorts on the roof of the house. He is walking across the ridge of the roof with his arms out and walking across each of his outstretched arms is a Blue and Gold Macaw who is screaming at the top of their lungs LOONIE BROTHERS FAMILY CIRCUS.’

They are so loud and high-pitched I think they might have permanently damaged my eardrums. The two macaws stretch out their wings. I have to admit that they are absolutely gorgeous birds. But please, please someone tell me that they are not going to be living across the street from me for the rest of my life.

While I’m looking up at the Macaws, I fail to see a very tall, very thin bald man come up behind the smoking girl and he is standing on the front porch wearing what I can only describe as a gold diaper. His feet are enormous and hairy. This is weird because he doesn’t appear to have hair on any other part of his body. In addition to having gigantic feet, it appears as if his toenails have never been cut and are so long that they have curled into a spiral shape over his feet. I can not imagine that there is any possibility that he is able to wear shoes. I stand immobilized by what is before my eyes and I wonder if this man’s only talent is being weird as hell. But no, at that moment he begins spewing fire out of his mouth. And the fire is shooting out five feet from his face.

I begin to question my own sanity again. Could this be really happening? And that’s when I see two men on eight-foot stilts coming out the gate from the back yard where the trailers are parked. And there is a wire between them and walking across the tightrope as they are walking towards us is a chimpanzee in a frilly pink tutu. Every time they stop, she takes a bow and swings 360 degrees around the tightrope and the crowd goes crazy and clap and yell. “You go girl.”

I can not imagine how they will top the monkey in the tutu, she was fantastic, so graceful. And that is when in the precise moment that I hear an oddly familiar sound. And then I see the largest pig I’ve seen in my entire life. He must have weighed over 500 pounds. He was snorting away. And on his back sat a petite young woman who had a huge white snake draped around her neck and torso.

And that is the moment that the crowd went crazy. They were clapping and laughing and the little kids were jumping up and down. The woman slowly got to her feet on the pig’s back as he lumbered along at his own slow pace. As she stood up the snake slithered his or her way down the woman’s body until his head was at her ankles. And then slowly slitherers up her body and stops at the top of her head.

And then I hear the player piano which had been pushed out onto the balcony start to play. And it was the song you always associate with circuses called: ENTRY OF THE GLADIATORS… And everyone starts to clap, and I clapped along with them because who wants the circus to end. And we all started clapping and laughing.

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