WHAT WOULD THEY SAY NOW? — Sharon Mark Cohen

The house across the street from ours just sold. There’s nothing unusual about the fact that we’ll once again be getting new neighbors. The house has turned over at least six times since we have lived across from their driveway for the past 44 years.

Ivan and Carol lived there when we first moved into our house in the Montrose Section of South Orange, New Jersey, in 1981. At that time, three abandoned residences in the neighborhood were boarded up. The “Tony Smith” house, where Smith died the year before, still had one of the renowned sculptor’s large-scale geometric pieces standing in the yard. The neighbor beside the Smith house excitedly invited us into his backyard to peek at the sensational three-dimensional art form.

Ivan often visited and looked around at our property, offering tools and helpful hints. He told us his wife stayed up late at night, slept in, and sunbathed in summertime. We often witnessed her with a book on a lounge chair on the front lawn. Then, they divorced and moved out. I’ll need to look up the sale history of the house because there were so many owners after their long stint, beginning much before we arrived in the neighborhood.*

In my younger years, I cheerfully walked across the street to schmooze with neighbors, but as the years passed, that pastime halted. Too many new neighbors with different schedules and people spending more time indoors changed the flavor of the “getting to know you” generation.

Speaking with one neighbor on a casual evening, as I tended to do, ended briskly when she started to complain about “the Jews.” I guess I don’t “look Jewish.” The next day, after rehashing the incident at work, an older Jewish co-worker said she would have “let her have it.” Not me. I chose to end the conversation and head home. Thankfully, it wasn’t long before they moved out.

Other neighbors came and went from that house over the years, but I’m not certain of their lengths of time on the block or their stories. One was a horror as we witnessed the man drive off with his wife clutched to the outside driver’s door handle as he dragged her down the street. Then, there were the Seton Hall male soccer team players who rented the place and destroyed the interior of the building.

After the soccer players moved out, the latest sellers practically turned the place into a palace. Seemingly unburdened by costs, they added a luxurious second-floor bathroom. Although there was a functional backyard patio, they built a second patio on the side of the house. Then, they hired top-notch landscapers to give the house stunning curb appeal.

Soon after all the renovations were completed, the movie trucks pulled up to film a scene from Diarra from Detroit. What I recall most about that is the fake snow they propped on their lawn and over our curb grass just a day after “real” snow melted from our grounds.

I remember the day those neighbors moved in and I went across the street to introduce myself. I met a lovely couple with a sweet young toddler daughter. As the years went by, with the pandemic lockdown in between, we never got to foster a friendship and saw them only on rare occasions, to wave a friendly hello. There’s one thing, however, which I’ll miss. That’s the van at their curb with the flashing lights.

One night, as my husband and I returned from a walk in the neighborhood, we spotted the flashing lights on the street. At first, we thought there must be an emergency. As we came closer, we were amused by what we saw.

The sparkling lights in the open-door van included a functioning barber pole. With a closer look, we witnessed our neighbor sitting unabashedly inside, as a young man clipped his hair. Those homeowners brought a bit of Hollywood to South Orange, and while they were at it, they raised the value of the houses in our area.

Other long-time neighbors are curious to know why the couple who worked in New York City and traveled often for work were leaving so soon, about seven years after remodeling. The week the house went on the market at 1.2 million dollars, an “Under Contract” sign appeared. While waiting to learn the final sale price and the reason for the sale, we’re wondering what the new owners will be like as neighbors.

As two young, idealistic “twenty-something’s,” we purchased our house when three houses on the block were boarded up. At that time, we saw the beauty in what later became the Montrose Historic District, with diverse homeowners who put their souls into restoring the area. The quiet residential neighborhood offered a variety of majestic old trees lining the streets, mature shrubs, and colorful flowers galore.

The only noise seemed to come from an occasional barking dog, crickets, owls, woodpeckers, cicadas, and the leaf blowers that the gardeners used. Annual block parties, attended by most of the neighbors, some with very large families in the houses capable of housing them, were always frolicking and fun. Aside from the deer, raccoons, squirrels, and rabbits, joined by occasional possums, skunks, and foxes creating mischief, the neighborhood drama came from that large brick house across from our digs.

Two uncles advised us not to buy here. My husband’s uncle lived long enough to say he was wrong. Since the realtor showing prospective buyers the house across the street gave a rough estimate of our 1914 architectural masterpiece being sellable at a higher rate than our neighbor’s, my uncle must be smiling at us from heaven and thinking, “Not bad.” Not bad at all.

A sales history shows the house across from ours sold seven times since 1983 (we moved to our house in March 1981).