The man across the street has a sign in his yard every election season, and it is never the same as mine. We have lived across from each other a long time. We wave in the morning. When his dog gets out, I call him. When my trash can blows over, he stands it back up. And that, by mutual and unspoken agreement, is as far as it goes.
I want to defend that arrangement, because I think it is one of the healthiest things in my life. People are always calling for us to come together, to sit down across the table, to find common ground. I have nothing against common ground in principle. I have just noticed that it is a dangerous place to stand.
Here is the honest truth. The few times my neighbor and I have talked for longer than a wave, it has not gone the way I expected. During the winter storm, when we both lost power for days, we stood in his driveway and talked about our light bills, and what the insurance company was doing to our premiums, and how his daughter could not find a doctor who took her plan. I agreed with nearly every word he said. I went home that night more unsettled than I had been by the cold.
A man needs to know who is on the other side. It organizes things. It tells you who to be angry at when the bill comes. If my neighbor and I started comparing notes, we might find we had the same bills and the same worries and the same complaints, and that the bills were all mailed from the same few addresses. I am not sure what I would do with that.
I notice that the folks who own the big companies and fund the campaigns never seem to have this problem. From what I can tell, they are friendly with everybody, and they do not seem to lose any sleep over whose yard sign is whose. I have sometimes wondered whether they would be sorry to see my neighbor and me get along. I do not wonder about it for long. I admire their peace of mind. I do not have their resources, so I make do with distance.
So I keep my neighbor where he is, across the street, a wave and a nod away. It is not hatred. I would not call it that. It is more like keeping the lid on a pot you are not ready to look into. I’ll vote for the Republican for Senate this fall, the same as the sign in my yard says. From what I hear, the other fellow keeps saying the fight is top against bottom rather than left against right, and if my neighbor ever started believing that, we would have to talk.
My wife says I would like him if I gave him half a chance. I expect she is right. That is exactly what worries me.
D. M.