Essay: Bowling alone in Southfield

After learning that my neighbor Gene died sometime this weekend, a neighbor sent a text message around. I stopped riding my bicycle and looked at my phone. My mind started traveling through the bits and pieces of memories of him, thinner than the coat of gray paint on his aging ranch dwelling.
 

I know 2,500 people on Facebook and only a handful on my block

He lived in a house with faded orange shutters on a tree-lined street in a post-World War II neighborhood called Hadley's Country Estates. He might have been the first or second owner of an 800-square foot house on a third of an acre lot in a look-alike subdivision in Southfield. Sadly I never learned much of anything about his life in the five years I've lived here.

Gene took meticulous care of his yard even as his health failed him. He hired a lawn service. Neighbors often rate each other by how consistently they mow their lawn and take out the trash. Beth, his next door neighbor, suspected something was amiss when his trash wasn't put out on Friday. She knew his heart was weak, and he was in and out of the hospital. He always came home alone.

We heard he died a wholly unremarkable death. Just a few feet from the microwave in his kitchen. A son happened to call and couldn't reach him. Beth tried knocking but no answer. The police came when called, knocked down the front door just below the deadbolt lock and found him expired.

My heart is heavy. I was too busy to check in on him, to know what mattered to Mr. Nice Lawn. I know 2,500 people on Facebook and only a handful on my block, including immediate neighbors and people with dogs, because I sometimes walk mine. Not often, because like most of the houses in the sub, I have a big fenced backyard where my Chihuahuas, Foxy, and Amigo, can chase tennis balls and bark to their hearts' content.

Every 10 minutes of commuting reduces all forms of social capital by 10 percent

Robert D. Putnam wrote Bowling Alone back in 2000 about how our society is becoming increasingly disconnected from family, friends, neighbors, and our democratic structures. His research found every 10 minutes of commuting reduces all forms of social capital by 10 percent. That club meetings experienced a 50 percent drop, and family dinners declined by 43 percent from an earlier decade. Gene seldom had company. He didn't bowl.

One friend sympathized with my plight. He said his northwest Detroit block used to be a tight nucleus of neighbors before people installed air conditioning units. Families would drag lawn chairs down to the street light along with their favorite beverages, and talk till the wee hours of the night, swapping stories and swatting mosquitoes. Once they had A/C and LED screen televisions, folks seldom ventured out except to mow the lawn and water their petunias.

I asked for thoughts from friends on Facebook, my virtual neighborhood. My friend Matt Roush, public relations director of Lawrence Technological University and former reporter for WWJ, laments on how little we know our neighbors.

"Growing up in the ancient days of the 1960s in a small town like Three Rivers, we knew everything about all of our neighbors," Matt writes. "I know that in our neighborhood in Dearborn, my wife got to know a lot of our neighbors—because she operated a daycare out of our home from 1998 to 2008. Me, not so much. Especially keeping WWJ hours."

Others suggested I could know my neighbors by putting some activities together. Dan Saad, a 25-year resident of Royal Oak and a regional communications director of Valeo North America, suggests I host a potluck cookout in Gene's honor.

"Take some positive/proactive steps and something good and lasting can result," Dan says on Facebook. "Doris and I work with our neighborhood homeowners association to promote events in our corner of the world that bring together folks who might otherwise remain strangers. We have an annual neighborhood park cleanup, a block sale, a potluck picnic and block parties."

On my former block of Lichfield in the Greenacres neighborhood of Detroit, Sandi and Dwight Kirksey host an annual caroling party and potluck dinner for friends and neighbors. For 30 consecutive years, frigid cold or icy rain, folks glide up and down the three-block street singing to people in each house with a lit porch light. It weaves a sense of community even if the voices are off key. We're best at "Jingle Bells."

Gretchen Van Cleave Monette started a chili contest among the owners of houses on Woodland in Ferndale just after 9-11. "I mourned the lives of 3,000 people in New York, yet I hardly knew my neighbors," she wrote. So the veteran events manager and freelance writer rang doorbells and insisted everybody bring out a slow cooker filled with their own chili recipe on a designated day in early October. She recruited Garden Fresh to supply chips. The Ferndale firefighters and a professional fire breather acted as judges.

People had such fun it became a citywide event. In coming months and years, her neighbors teamed up for garage sales, child care, and parties. No one was ever a stranger. She and her family moved to a larger house in Washington Township, but never forgot the taste of community among those living in old frame houses with big hearts.

Planting and weeding helps build a community of friends in the West Outer Drive and Six Mile neighborhood, according to president and chief gardener, Deborah Bevelle, a 33-year resident. "We only knew about four neighbors when we started the block club four years ago. Now I know neighbors on every block on both sides of the street for a whole mile, and we love coming together once a month. I thank God for the vision. And so do my neighbors and community," she wrote.

I've got work to do. I must mow the lawn, gather up all my folding chairs and invite neighbors over for a chat about Gene, in remembrance of an old man who lived a very quiet life.

But first, I have to catch up on Facebook. I might miss the latest piece someone posted on politics or the best joke of the day. Sometimes I feel my online engagement is swallowing me whole.  

Will someone know to watch my dogs if anything happens to me?