Neighbor Next Door

211 Clark Drive. It was the first home my mom and dad bought together. The home they began to raise both their children in. My first nursery was a forest green Noah's Ark theme on the front side of the house and the first window past the large double pane view off the front porch. This home holds some of my first memories, learning how to ride a bike, my first birthday party with school friends, the first time I heard dial-up internet. This house was also special because of the man that lived across the street.

His name was Jack Evans. Jack was the grandfather of a former classmate of my dads younger sister. Josh (the grandson) was a deputy for the Laurel County Sheriffs Office and was the man I was supposed to go to in the case of any emergency. Years passed and I only admired the neighbor from a distance. One day, my dad came home and told my brother and myself that Jack would no longer live in the baby blue house across the street, he was moving. Just like that the hero I would need to save me in a dire circumstance was gone.

Fast forward about 7 years to Summer Springs Drive. After a rezoning of the school district the Rice household went on a search for a new home, staying in the farm house before moving into the Sublimity Springs subdivision a whopping 2.5 minutes from driveway to driveway from my Nan's house. It was an average single-story range home with roses and an overgrown holly bush in the front landscaping. Nothing about this home was particularly awesome, but it was enough, and it was ours. It had been about 2 days since we moved the last of our belongings from the farm house over, and dad had chosen to head out into the back yard in an attempt to organize our new shed. He had been gone about 3 hours when he came bursting into the living room from the back porch. Immediately he made a beeline to our mom - in a panic I followed. "Heather? Heather! Heather, you will never guess who I just spent the last 3 hours talking to?!" It was Jack.

Looking back on this moment, I can only tell you how innocent it seems. To be so unaware of the divine miracle that God had orchestrated. To be connected to a person through a mutual party (Josh), to establish a spirit of safety with them (emergency safe space), and then to be separated by physical distance through 4 home relocations and time all to be rejoined as neighbors again is hard for me to comprehend. I think what is even more powerful then what some would call a sheer coincidence, is the void that this man would fill - as a father, grandfather, mentor, coach, and Christian. I think that is what brought so much joy to my dad that day. And for the next 10 years Jack filled our yard and my heart with days that go something like this:

I was a sophomore in high school when I decided I wanted a goat. Not just any goat, a pure breed Boar goat that I could use as a base for my Students Agricultural Experience (SAE). You see I am highly competitive by nature. I had found my niche in outdoor education and experiences - it took a boyfriend taking me to the county ag fair the summer prior to my freshman year for me to turn into almost an unrecognizable specimen to my family. I traded my softball glove for a compound bow, swapped my high heels for Tony Lama's, and poured my natural love for the outdoors into specialized sectors of agriculture. This year in particular a few of us FFA officers had gotten together and decided that we would compete in individual classes in hopes to advance to state in each category. Coming from the cattle industry, where we raised registered black angus, I wanted to try something new, something I could work with at home, in the subdivision, without having to travel to the families farm. Goats it was.

Let me start with by saying - Jack was fully aware and in support of the plan. Get the goat (one for the first phase then add based on our success), set up two extra large dog kennels in the back yard as it's home, then tell my folks with Jack as a witness incase things went south. As you can imagine - the unveiling of a goat living in a dog kennel in the backyard of a subdivision went exactly as we expected. My parents freaked. At least they freaked until the realized I had not acted alone. The goat had been purchased through a famer/vet who was the son of a colleague of my mom. The kennels had been gifted through a grant program for urban farming, Jack had secured a dog house for the poor pet to live in, and together Jack and I had named him - Wade. The deal was done and after a few hours of male bonding, Jack had convinced my dad that this was the best project I had done so far.

What was originally supposed to be a summer project turned into my entire high school experience. For years Jack and I could be seen walking goats on leash up and down the main road of the subdivision. I would wake up first thing on a Sunday morning and catch Jack out at the kennel feeding our goats their own honey bun breakfast before we left for Sunday service. Together we would build, rebuild, cover, recover, and engineer new unescapable roofs on the tops of the kennel for our whether named Russel. We would take bets during the winter months how many hosta bushes would sprout and grow in the middle of the yard the next spring from all the times they feasted in the landscaping. Jack planted a strawberry patch at the corner of his garage that we used to train them how to knock and open lever doors that led from the back porch into the living room on the rare occasion that I was home alone. These were our pets, this was our project.

Everything we did we did together. Everything I wanted to learn he taught me. When we weren't chasing goats, we were shooting. When we weren't shooting he was telling me stories of his glory days as a world class archer. When we weren't in the mood to do anything we would sit in the doorway of his garage and shell peanuts (one year he decided he was going to be a peanut farmer and planted an entire acre we had to harvest). I spent many hours holding his wrench as he would tinker on a motor he found at the Flea Market, and on special occasions after the fall picking, I would hand deliver a basket of fried apple pies for us to sit and eat together.

This man was everything I needed. He was everything we all needed. The Thanksgiving before Jack passed I took a clipping from his favorite double knockout rose bush in our back yard, the deep pink, and used the old rag he gave me to make a starter - just as he taught me. That clipping was part of the last projects we worked on together, and the only project I had to complete on my own after he passed. The last memory I have of that home is peering out the back door at the most beautiful rose garden, knowing that it all started with love for a neighbor next door.