Block Party Day

So this morning we slept in til about 1:00...which was cool, and which led me to believe that maybe LJ's not deliberately ignoring or neglecting me--that it's just a question of schedules. It was nice, anyhow.



Then we got up. Today's Block Party day--apparently not just on this block, as I found out when I walked up to the grocery store on Madison to get some Pepsi. Every block from Jackson all the way up to Madison is having their block parties today as well--I wonder if there's a tacit agreement to do it that way, in order to minimize the overall effect on commerce. If there's one day a year when nobody hustles on five blocks, that's better than five days when nobody hustles on one block each, you know?



Around 2:00 they fired up the music. My luck, the DJ is stationed on Len and Phoebe's porch--next door. (I love the music...well, most of it. I'm about sick of Usher's various "Confessions", and no matter WHO R Kelly is singing to or about, he skeeves me righteously. I'm sorry, but a man who's suspected of having sex with teenage girls should really, REALLY not refer to himself as the "Pied Piper of R&B". That's just ICKY, folks. And all the women-hating and women-are-only-good-for-one-thing music kinda pisses me off...especially when I see little girls of not six or seven years old mouthing the words to the non-sanitized version of "Slow Motion", which includes the immortal lines "If you're gon' be hardheaded I'll make you get up off me..." and "That outside dick keeps these ho's sick..." Nice. Real fuckin' nice there, guys. My philosophical objections to the content aside, I like the music.) It's loud but not intolerable, and my windows are open. However, I think when the NASCAR race comes on tonight, I'm either gonna close the windows or put on the closed-captioning and READ the race as much as watch it.



I sat out on the porch for a while, watching the guys play basketball, the little kids run around, the neighbors tending their grills. The lady who just moved in next door--the matriarch of what has to be one of the worlds' largest extended families, judging from the thirty or forty litle ones running around at all hours--was overseeing the barbecuing at her place, and she waved to me and brought me over to the fence.



"Hey baby! You ain't got no charcoal over there?" she asked me.

"No grill, either," I told her. "And no food to put on one, for that matter..."

"Well once we get goin' over here, I'll fix you a plate. Matter of fact, I was gonna send you one the other night, but you never did look out your window..."



And a couple hours later, damned if one of the babies didn't knock on the door with a foil-covered plate full of food. Ribs, spaghetti, hot-links...I managed to get barbecue sauce all over the entire front of my shirt, and it was so good I nearly licked the shirt clean too.



Can I say, I LOVE THIS BLOCK???



Once I get some groceries in the house on Tuesday, I'm gonna make a few batches of my famous caramel corn and bring it over, for the little ones. They may be loud, and they may keep the oddest hours, but I like this family. (Now if I could only pick up on some of their names...I am SO bad with names.)