Today’s post comes from tim

mitch

i feel bad

real bad

a couple of weeks ago we had a police car pull up in front of the house and i told my son he was in trouble for parking his car on the streets of prestigious west bloomington and as he cursed the uppity neighbors who would call on a wonderful guy like him it became obvious that the cops were there for a different reason.

i had to go to a meeting but i got a call half an hour later from my family that a body bag came out of the house and the intrigue was too much to handle.

i have a hot tub between my house and the neighbors and i was doing my late night dip 4 nights in a row when at 1030 or so the alarm would go off on the truck in the driveway next door and not just for a couple of beeps of the horn either, it was a good couple of minutes of horn honk honk honking followed by mitch the next door neighbor coming out and shutting off the alarm but starting the truck then sitting in the truck with it running in the driveway for 10 minutes before leaving. i would finish my hot tub and go in wondering for a minute or two what that was about but getting on with my life. even the 4th or 5th night i found it odd but not odd enough to have me try to put together the puzzle.

i remembered the scene in rear window where the wendell corey as the cop tells jimmy stewart that he should allow other people the privacy they deserve. a lot of things appear odd when observed for the outside.

i started working the theory in my mind. the mom who i had met. kind of an aunt bea sort of woman had the son mitch who i met the day debbie first came to the house to unpack boxes in the kitchen. he came in the garage and gave one of those helllloooooo call out from his entry through the open garage door. i went to say hello and his intro was to say “ hi… my name is mitch. i live next door, do you want me to plow your driveway this winter?”

i laughed and said “no, we can cover this ourselves” (we had just laughed about how the driveway was barely big enough to park the cars on and how it would take 15 minutes to shovel after a foot of snow) mitch shrugged and waved goodbye as he retreated back through the garage full of unpacked boxes. mitch is a cross between a cave man and a troll who danced when he stepped and looked like a refugee from a russian circus troop. that was the last i saw of him other than as he drove off regularly in his truck.

my theories were based totally on my thought of the moment.

maybe he was a wild man who was needing to get away from his mom who was beating him and so he pushed the alarm button on his key ring until she let him go shut it off. he sat in the car until he couldn’t stand it any more then drove off to return after she had fallen asleep.

maybe she was the one getting beat up and she pushed the button so he would have to stop and go out to shut it off. he would sit and cool down until he drove off to return later and try it again when cooler heads prevailed.

then one day the cooler heads did not prevail and he killed her and was on the run, the truck had not been in the driveway for a week and so they hadn’t caught him.

the story needed a little adjustment when the junk inc truck showed up and took away 1 large piece of furniture like a love seat or an oversized chair . the windows on the house were opened to let the odors out both upstairs and down so the body must have been there long enough to start to stink.

people started showing up in the driveway and going in to clean and pack stuff up.

the comings and goings were the riddle and then the pickup truck mitch drove showed up.

so he wasn’t on the run… but wait it had duct tape over the rear window covering a hole about the size of a bullet hole made by a pistol or a rifle.

how did that fit into the equation?

my next theory was that mitch got shot and took a cab home or got a ride home and died in the basement. his mom must have been in florida on vacation and when he didn’t answer the phone she called the police who checked it out and discovered the body… but this was all conjecture.

we don’t know any neighbors and don’t know of a way to find out what happened. the other night my son devin looked up police reports for the house next door and found out mitch was a troubled guy who had been sited for carrying a gun while on parole as a felon and was in trouble for that.   a bit more research discovered his obit saying he had died unexpectedly on february 8th. that didn’t shed any light for me but my son said “died unexpectedly” is code for suicide in the lingo of police and obits.

so i feel guilty for dreaming up all the fantastic stories about the beatings and who did what to who. i feel bad for not being aware that the troubled guy next door was needing something and i was oblivious.

it makes you realize that there are people out there that you stand next to everyday that are in need of something, maybe a smile or a kind word or a job other than plowing driveways on a mild minnesota winter in order to make the demons move back a little

my family is glad we don’t have a felon who danes like a troll and carries guns living next door. i hadn’t thought of that. i just feel bad that a soul in need was next door and i didn’t even realize it.

i guess the reality is that i still don’t know anything for sure but it gives me a funny feeling every time i look in the window 50 feet away from the hot tub and realize he was so unhappy.

miss true heart, miss torso and raymond burr all lived outside jimmy stewart’s window in alfred hitchcock’s story. mitch lived outside mine.

different stuff touches us and makes an imprint. some good some bad some potent some just a little angle kiss.
what’s your favorite movie?