We’re fortunate to live on a little lane off a secondary road, just a mile from the only firehouse for miles around. It is a volunteer fire and EMT company (as most of Wicomico County’s fire companies are) and we’re grateful for all that they do. Although we’re within earshot of the firehouse siren (which sounds whenever there’s an emergency) it’s far enough away that it doesn’t scare the daylights out of me when it goes off. And, in fact, it doesn’t go off very often – I don’t think it even sounds off weekly. Things are PRETTY quiet at this end of the county. It’s rare to hear a siren of any kind, and so when an ambulance drove up the secondary road past our lane on a sunny Sunday afternoon a few weeks ago, it got our attention. But it had been an odd day in the neighborhood already, so perhaps we shouldn’t have been all that surprised.
Earlier in the afternoon I had called my husband to the window. There was a group of about 5 kids (sort of urban-slick looking “youths” that looked out of place on our street) congregating in the lane who we’d never seen before, and we know all the neighborhood children by sight (most by name). They seemed to be just generally hanging out, rough housing a bit, and walking up and down the lane. We didn’t know what to make of this wandering tribe but no one else in the neighborhood seemed to be concerned (and all the neighbors keep an eye on every car that drives up our cul-de-sac). We kept one eye on the tribe while we worked on our weekend chores; they seemed to be well-behaved for the most part and seemed to be interested only in each other.
After an hour or so of wandering the kids grouped together in front of a house down near the secondary road. The family that lives there has only been here a few months and, as other families in the neighborhood point out, “they rent.” I’ve met them and they seem to be nice enough, but no one on the street knows them well. A few minutes later we watched as our “wild” neighbor from the other end of the street drove up to the tribe in his pickup truck and stopped to talk to them. Then he uncharacteristically peeled out leaving a patch of rubber on the road, fishtailing his truck a bit as he left. This seemed a trifle odd, but he is the “wild” one on the street (when he’s not exhausted from working full time in construction) and everyone down here is proud of their pickup truck. So we watched with only mild interest as he screeched around the corner from our little lane onto the secondary road. We didn’t even notice that the tribe walked around the corner too, up the road and out of sight.
A few minutes later we heard the strange sound of a siren coming up the secondary road from the firehouse. We looked out the window to see something we had yet to see in our two years of living here: an ambulance. Moments later the cars of both Next-Door-Neighbor (NDN)1 and NDN2 came flying out of their respective driveways, down the lane and around the corner in the same direction that the ambulance had just gone. These events had finally gotten our full attention but as we gazed out the window with puzzled looks on our faces there was nothing to see on our little lane; all of the activity seemed to be down the secondary road and out of sight. After standing at the window stupified for a minute or two we shrugged our shoulders and returned to the chores.
After about ten minutes we noticed “wild” neighbor walking up the road toward his house. On his heels were NDN1 and NDN2, returning home in their cars; moments later the phone rang. It was NDN1 asking for my husband (down here men mostly talk to men – it’s just understood), who asked what was going on and then began to laugh out loud. Well it turns out that many folks here abouts have fire department radio scanners and so can hear the emergency calls as they are broadcast to emergency personnel. Thus, NDN1 and NDN2 both knew what had happened around the corner: Our “wild” neighbor had just raced the “rent” neighbor in HIS pickup truck while the tribe, who it turns out were acquaintances of “rent” neighbor and had come from a neighboring town just for the race, cheered them on. Unfortunately when “wild” neighbor got to the end of the race (which coincidently was also the literal end of road) he lost control of his truck as it plowed into the field straight ahead, flipping it three times. Fortunately he was not hurt (although it’s hard to see how he managed not to be). And the way that NDN1 described the ensuing hullaballoo to my husband was, apparently, pretty funny.
Well, the tribe had gotten what they had come for and dispersed; we’ve never seen them again. “Wild” neighbor’s truck was towed home the next day, totaled. “Rent” neighbor still drives his to work every day so he must have come out of the race okay. It certainly gave the neighborhood something to talk about for a day or two. Now we know that if we ever have a medical emergency everyone in the neighborhood will know almost as soon as the EMTs. And that’s enough excitement for Wicomicoville for quite a while.
