The best part about living in Coral Ridge is the neighbors. Many Coral Ridge residents have lived here for decades, and luxuriate in the easy familiarity that comes from not having to wonder whether the new neighbor raises pit bulls or has a meth lab. Coral Ridge neighbors are friendly but reserved, and still refer to the neighbors who arrived in 1995 as “the new folks.”
I’ve lived all over Ft Lauderdale, and my neighbors were often the reason I moved out. I remember living in a Wilton Manors townhouse where the residents monitored their neighbors with binoculars, reporting anything juicy at daily poolside happy hours. There was the high-rise on the beach where the old folks prowled the grounds in the pre-dawn hours looking for cretins who broke Condo Rules: “Towel over the railing? Noted. Wearing a bathing suit on the beach? Noted.” There was a truly scary apartment in Oakland Park where a drive-by shooting was a very real possibility and even worse was the house in Imperial Point where the neighbors would invite me to church, followed by a potluck supper; last I heard, they were still praying for me, so I was relieved beyond words when I moved back to Coral Ridge to a home a stone’s throw from the house where I grew up. And then I began to meet the neighbors.
Barbie has lived in the neighborhood for decades; she qualifies as a “great” neighbor – mainly because we rarely speak. We wave at each other with great enthusiasm when she walks her dog and she is considerate enough to not allow her dog to mess on our front lawn if she thinks I am watching.
Tom down the street is my bad weather barometer. I don’t care what the Hurricane Center says, if Tom puts his shutters up I do too, no questions asked, and he has never been wrong. We typically speak only after a hurricane: “Do you have power yet?” “Me neither!” But we both wave frantically when our cars pass.
I was stunned to see that Mother Murphy was still in the neighborhood: I thought she was 100 back in 1967, although my ability to estimate age when I was 8 was probably not keen. Mother Murphy was an attractive widow who shamelessly chased my father, much to the annoyance of my mother who once muttered, “She wants to move in and take my place,” at which point Mrs. Murphy became, and remained, “Mother Murphy.”
And then there are the Willow’s, who moved in several years after us and are still there. In 1974 I agreed to wash Mrs. Willow’s car for the princely sum of $5, but, conveniently, she had no cash that day; 35 years later the debt remains unpaid and it still annoys me. I calculated the debt with 35-years of interest and it is a nice sum, but I know I’ll never collect it. That’s the trouble with new neighbors. You just can’t trust them.