A leaving neighbor (1 of 2): Preparing to leave.

So, my one (mildly dark) (bearded) (rural-raised) (motorcyclist) (Indian heritage) neighbor is moving to a bigger city in the region, since he's graduated now, and he got an engineering job there.

The weekend before we left, we were chit-chatting when I was out in my backyard reading, and he got a pruning shear and took down two smaller trees-of-heaven that were in his backyard behind a shed but were dropping seedlings over by me.

"I hate those," he was like. "I like the way they look when they grow real big, but we had a bunch of those around our barn, and the roots go straight down and they ruined the foundation."

And, he made sure to hack into the top of the remaining stumps, to hurt the organism more and expose it to bacteria through its mangled section so it couldn't come back so easily.

He said that he talks to the (wizened) (hippie) across the street, and she has dementia and the Quakers look after her, and she showed up on his doorstep right when he moved in looking for her friend who had lived there, and that he visits her and talks with her a couple of times a week, but it's like time doesn't exist for her, if he's gone for a month and then comes back, she doesn't notice.

She likes to garden and pick up trash, he said, and she also collects glass bottles, so if you ever find a really cool-looking glass bottle, make sure to save it for her.

He also said that he had 18 motorcycles in the garage that he's been working on, he would be picking them up and repairing them and turning them around and selling them for a profit, and somehow he got too many, and now he's had to rush and sell them off to people, one guy was going to be coming by to pick up two that he had bought.

"I wouldn't say that to too many people," I was like; "You sound capitalist."

"Yeah," he was like, and he didn't seem chuckle or angry, but rather self-abashed, since the kids are like that nowadays.

And, a(n older) (black) guy came buy with a truck and a trailer then and asked him if he had any scrap metal, and he didn't, but I said I had a broken grocery cart if he'd wait for me to get it from my basement, and he would, so I went and got it for him and showed him how the plastic wheels were broken, and in front of my neighbor, the guy was saying that he could use the metal, or maybe he'd put some new wheels on it and use it himself.