The Main Idea Is To Be Courteous To Your Neighbors

One hot summer, many years ago, my wife, five small children, and I were living in a small rental home that had no air conditioning. To make matters worse, all the bedrooms were on the second floor where it was even hotter. Temperatures were in the high nineties and above, and it didn’t cool down much at night. We opened all the windows and ran fans to make it nights bearable.

The house was on the main street in our small town and right next to the parking lot for a park. The house’s yard was surrounded by a chest-high concrete fence. On weekend nights, the teenagers and twenty-somethings would “drag Main”, driving up and down Main Street honking and calling to each other, and they would often congregate in that parking lot next to our home. And they weren’t particularly quiet as they talked loudly and gunned their engines.

One unbearably hot weekend night, it was 1:00 am and my wife and I were trying to sleep. Suddenly, the noises of the main draggers reached a crescendo pitch. My wife had had enough. Ignoring my advice to let it be, she marched down the stairs, out the front door, and across the lawn to the concrete fence next to the parking lot, wearing nothing but a thin nightgown. She slammed her hands on the fence and yelled at the ten or so young people congregated there. This is basically what she said.

Wife: “Hey! I have had it! You are making too much noise, and if you wake up my baby, I will grab you by the ears, pull you into my house, and make you put that baby to sleep! Now be quiet!”

Without waiting for a reply, she marched back into the house, slamming the front door behind her. I peeked out a few minutes later and the parking lot was deserted. We never saw the main draggers again for the rest of the time that we lived there.