Like A Good Neighbor...

 

Harry Truman's quote is right, I think.  It is important to have good neighbors.  It is more important to be a good neighbor.  It is truly an impossible task to ever be as good of a neighbor as ours are to us.  We don't have a fence separating our property.  We visit often.  When they mow their yard, they often mow way over on our side of the property line to help us out.  When we go out of town, they watch over the place for us and feed the animals and collect the eggs.

They fish on the local bayous and routinely bring over fresh fish to us.  When hurricanes hit, they come over with a chain saw before the wind stops blowing and offer to assist.  When our power was out for weeks on end, they knocked on the door dragging a big extension cord and told us to plug in to their generator to power our freezer so we wouldn't lose our meat.  They have lemon, kumquat and satsuma trees and share all we can eat.

We didn't know our neighbors when we moved here.  We quickly learned to appreciate and love them.  I don't know if I could ever be one tenth the neighbor they are to us.  I thank God for our neighbors.

I submit that a little known survival technique in difficult times is to have good neighbors.  Why, just during the midst of this cold spell, we heard a knock at the door and our neighbors were there with a big rubbermaid container of homemade crab and shrimp gumbo.

We put some rice on and ladled big bowls of crab and shrimp gumbo.  Talk about warm your bones up!  Our family truly enjoyed the delicious gumbo and the kind neighborly gesture!

The cold didn't stand a snowball's chance in hell due to a warm bowl of gumbo and the warmth of neighborly love.