2002-09-20 - 11:22 p.m.

Burglars

Something happened Wednesday that I forgot to mention, another lovely tale of the neighborhood around the Hamster Palace.

I think I've mentioned before that my house is on the corner of two streets, one a main north-south artery into Frown Town, the other a side street. On the side street, for some reason, the houses on my side of the street seem to be full of quiet neighbors, while the other side of the street is nothing but problems.

Starting on the corner nearest to me on the other side of the street there is a big, barn-like house, followed by three smaller, one-family houses. Most of the problems come from the three smaller houses. The one nearest to me seems to be full of noisy teenage thugs, while the one farthest from me seems to be full of scumbags as well. Some of this latter group have been known to heckle Lily while she is on her way to work.

I have a hard time figuring out who lives in what house since I'm constantly seeing people go from one house to the other.

I was in my back yard, such as it is, doing some repair work when a woman walked up to me, and she identified herself as the woman living in the middle house. She was blonde, and I would have guessed her age to be no more than 22 or 23, but that guess must be too low since one of her kids looked to be at least 9 or 10. She had a toddler in her arms, but kept trying to shoo away the other two children because she was talking with me about something she didn't want them to hear about. I also noticed that each of the three children had a different skin color.

She wanted to know, had I heard anything about any burglaries in the area? The reason she was asking was that their house was broken into over Labor Day weekend, and a lot of stuff was stolen. Also, there had been a couple other robberies on some other houses a block over.

I was flabbergasted. This was the first I'd heard of any of this. I told her that I wish that I'd seen something, but I was out of town myself over that weekend.

Her first thought (as was mine) was that the troublesome teenagers in the house next to hers had done the deed, but she figured that they wouldn't be so dumb as to break into the house right next door. However, while talking to another neighbor, she found out that two of the guys who are always hanging around there had approached them about buying some jewelry and a DVD player, precisely the sort of things that were missing from her house.

So not only were these guys stupid enough to break into and burglarize the house next door, they were stupid enough to try to sell the swag to someone else who lives a few houses away. We are obviously not dealing with criminal masterminds here.

I asked her who the people were that she suspected and she described them to me. Sure enough, they were two of the biggest troublemakers, and I've noticed them loitering around for quite some time. I wish I'd remembered to ask her what their names were.

She said that the police seemed not terribly interested in the crime. After she called them, the officer who came just talked to them on the porch and didn't even come into the house. They had to go down to the police station to give them most of the information, and the police refused to dust for fingerprints or anything like that.

This sort of apathy is distressing, but I can't say I was surprised: the Frown Town police force has a dreadful reputation . I asked her if she'd told the police about her suspicions and the other things that she'd found out, and she admitted she hadn't. I suggested that calling the police and telling them this new stuff might be a good idea.

Of course this new information makes me feel rather insecure. However, I think the chuckleheads would have a much harder time getting into this house, since all the ways into the house are easily visible from the street, and the two back doors are heavy metal fire doors with deadbolts. Also the fact that I'm home 99.999% of the time would discourage anyone from trying to break in. Still, knowing that there is a possibility of getting jacked by these junior gangsters makes me nervous, and there is this exasperating feeling of helplessness.

The neighbor woman, whose name was Rosie, told me that her littlest girl is now taking to hiding away her crayons in the cabinet "so the men don't come take them away."

I know exactly how she feels.