We got a message from the woman who bought our old house that our former neighbor, Sparky, was in the hospital. Apparently he had a stroke. He had just stopped down here a couple of weeks ago and he looked so good we were thinking he had stumbled on the fountain of youth.
I’ve probably namedropped Sparky in these pages more than anyone else. Ours is such an unlikely association. We lived next door to each other for twenty six years and our first morning there the woman he was married to for a short time rang our bell with a pot of coffee in her hand. Her first words were, “We’re so glad you’re not niggers.”
We stayed away from them for years. They divorced, she left and we’d talk to Sparky over the fence. He collected junk and fixed things. He gave a us a mower that he found on the street and repaired. I started sneaking photos of him. Little did I know at the time that he loved it when you took his photo.
He played guitar and liked country music. He burned garbage in a barrel behind his garage. He told us he shot a sewer rat out front. He blew our minds and we became intrigued with his every backyard activity. Before we moved, I had keys to his garage and his shed.
We stopped up to see him in the hospital. He’s doing physical therapy but he is in rough shape. We made a card for him with this photo on it.
Listen to Sparky’s Shed by Invisible Idiot (Margaret Explosion)