Thanks to the very helpful folks at HaloScan, my missing comments are back! I spent a long evening last night copying and pasting seventeen comments from one post. It's tedious work and I am very happy they were able to take care of the rest. I'm even more grateful because the mistake was originally mine and the fix optional. Thank you, anonymous HaloScan support staff!

Unfortunately, my elation at the retrieval of the missing comments has been tempered by the sound of one of the Neighbornator's offspring practicing the piano. Yes, it's "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," though it's much improved from last year's attempts.

I am afraid that the annual jazz party preparations have begun. We have our bags packed in case we have to leave on short notice.

Tags: Music, Neighbornator, jazz, Comments

(To read Part I, go here.)

I’m sure it was an oversight when Dieter neglected to give us an invitation to his jazz party. We had been out of town the previous week. Perhaps a strong wind had blown the slip of paper off our porch. Maybe Dieter, Jr. had inadvertently skipped our mailbox.

I watched from our upstairs bedroom as a small tent went up. Thinking back to Angelica’s mention of the party, I imagined flinging open the gate between the two yards. The hordes would spill in, clutching Coronas and Aquafinas, swaying to saxophone solos and smashing our sepia grass into the dirt.

Our landlord and Dieter were tight, friends from when she lived in our house. The fence contains two remnants of their relationship: a double-doored gate connecting the yards and a 2x2-foot window. The thick, beveled glass offers a view of birch and bamboo, visual access to the back corner of Dieter’s world. It's a sideways glance, no eye contact necessary, thank goodness. The gate came with a shiny new padlock. We’ve never bothered to remove the key, so there it dangles, a symbol of hope gone sour, of potentials never realized.

I was thinking about our poor neighborly relations -- where did we go wrong? -- when the dog nosed me in the thigh. Oh yeah. Time for a walk. I put my son in the back carrier, leashed Nora, and walked out into frenetic Birdland preparations. The Neighbornator family was bringing in more foodstuffs. I put on my friendly face.

“You’re coming tomorrow?” Dieter asked, his tone light. As we passed his dog, Nora growled and lunged, putting on her vicious cur act. She’s insecure and totally harmless, though you’d never know from her bark. I pulled on the leash. "Nora! No!" My son buried his face in my back. Dieter observed our little drama with a poker face.

With Nora subdued, I got back to the conversation. “Coming?” I asked blankly.

He seemed surprised. “I gave you an invitation! Are you sure? Didn’t we talk about this? It must have been your husband. Ja, that’s it! I talked to your husband about it a few weeks ago.”

I shook my head. Nein.

“I am sure I talked to him about it. Ja, I remember ... Oh," he interrupted himself, realizing the futility of this line of thought. "Ja. There will be music of all kinds! It starts at 1:00 and goes on all day. Invite all your friends!” Dieter was a little flustered.

I tried to be nice about it, to muster up a smile or some polite enthusiasm. We had just gotten back from a trip to the East Coast. Everyone was jet-lagged and sleep-deprived. My husband and I were in the middle of a marital mess. Given I could hear this man’s dinner conversation, what would an all-day jazz party sound like? An all-day jazz party that started at my son's nap time?

Saturday, September 29th 2007 was a beautiful day. The sky was cloudless and the air dry and warm. A light breeze ruffled the leaves in the trees, a pleasant sound, easy on the ears. At 10:30 a.m., in a yard hemmed in on all sides by houses, in a yard of perhaps 500 square feet, in a yard next door, it started. “Testing, testing, 1-2-3.” Someone was testing a microphone. Attached to an amplifier. Attached to speakers.

We were doomed.

At 1:00 p.m. sharp the warm-up act started. Gospel. This was followed by a traditional jazz quartet. At some point a pianist pounded out some classical music (was that Dieter's son? The one who kept on butchering "Ain't No Mountain High Enough"? If so, he had improved.) Then an R&B band took the stage, followed by a nod to Thelonius Monk.

During the intermissions, my husband and I would look at each other: was this it? But it kept on keeping on. The pauses were just long enough for equipment changes. We watched as vans pulled up and spilled out musicians and instrument cases, the next group on the marquee getting in line. We listened for the appreciative applause at the end of each solo. We looked up the Berkeley city code on amplified music. Dieter was well over his four hour limit.

From our backyard, the music was loud. Very, very loud. No wonder Dieter didn’t understand most of what I said: he was probably half-deaf from years of noise exposure, Pete Townshend without the guitar. The animals were agitated. Nora paced back and forth until she found refuge in the bathroom, while the cats would scratch at the back door to be let out, only to rush back into the house with flattened ears and disgusted expressions. My son skipped his nap. And the bands kept on coming.

Our last escape from the wall of sound was at 8:30 p.m.. Hoping to gain back sanity lost, hoping that our son would finally fall asleep, we went for a drive up in the hills. No one said a word as the car wound up steep inclines, pushed through eucalyptus-scented air to a quiet, dark place with a view. It was a surprisingly clear night and we could see San Francisco. We watched lines of cars snake across the Bay Bridge, felt wonderfully insulated from the sounds of engines and car horns, saxophones and vocalists. Our son was asleep. Time to go home. Surely the whole mess was over by now.

But it wasn't.

It seems funny now, funny that we came home to a Mexican band singing La Bamba, complete with horn section and what sounded like clog dancing. It was the most raucous gig of the day. It was almost 11 p.m. When would the madness end?

And then it just ended. As the song wound down, the crowd whistled and stomped, screamed for an encore. Ten hours of incredible music, well-performed, well-appreciated, and very loud, and they wanted more. It was not to be. Jazz Fest 2007 was over.

The hordes slowly dispersed. We brushed our teeth and went to bed.

For several months, we barely looked at Dieter, whom we christened The Neighbornator. We didn't confront and he didn't apologize. There were no arguments about the event or the noise level, just bitten tongues and imagined amusing scenarios, all with the self-centered surgeon as an object of ridicule, his accent exaggerated and his mannerisms cartoonish. We've gotten some good laughs out of it.

For Jazz Fest 2008, we'll be out of town.

Tags: Neighbornator, jazz

He’s known around our house as “The Neighbornator.” It’s a cheap shot, I admit, but better than other names we could be using.

Yes, our wayward next-door neighbor is originally from Germany, though his accent has been softened by thirty years in the U.S. “Dieter” is in his mid-50s, of medium build, tall, with white hair and sky-blue eyes. He’s a neonatalogist with a specialty in prenatal surgery. Maybe it takes his kind of arrogance, of surety, to operate on the not yet born. The hand must be steady and the conscience clear before you make the cut. You don’t toss that self-confidence aside upon leaving the operating room. Dieter prides himself on being a regular guy who does his own home and car repairs. He rides a sleek black motorcycle to the hospital. He blasts classic jazz tunes and world music while doing yard work. But these are not crimes.

Maybe we weren’t receptive to friendship. Perhaps we have nothing in common. There was talk of a barbecue that never materialized. He and his wife made a welcome to the neighborhood visit that ended at the front gate. Dieter didn’t seem to approve of our dog training or of our slow to smile toddler and most of our conversations left me feeling vaguely insulted. The relationship became one of brief smiles and half-hearted waves from car windows.

But we became very familiar with the patterns of Dieter’s life. We had no choice. The houses in our West Berkeley neighborhood are built tightly together. They tell the secrets of the lives held within: whose marriage is in jeopardy, who drinks too much, who cries before leaving the house every morning.

This knowledge of our neighbors' lives is forced, impossible to avoid. Unscreened windows let in fresh air and leak out unsolicited information. We hear the arguments, the sex, the banal exchanges on what is needed at the store. Glasses clink and sobs are suppressed into pillows. People curse during arguments and berate their teenagers for sullen attitudes. (As I type this from the deck, I hear a mother and daughter fighting. The daughter is screaming “I don’t care! I don’t care! I don’t care! “ over her mother's tirade. Closer, shoes crunch on gravel. Someone clears their throat as they open a back door. There. The door slammed behind them. Silence.)

When Dieter spent all of last August sprucing up the yard and power washing his house, I knew something was up. He was on the cordless phone all the time, speaking enthusiastically, making arrangments, using "Ja, ja" instead of yes. We’d heard about his annual shindig. “I told him that you’d be great friends, hanging out together, opening up the yard for his annual jazz party,” said Angelica, our landlord, naively before she took off for Arizona. Now I watched a small tent go up, saw the stacks of chairs and tables, observed as Mr. And Mrs. Dieter ferried cases of water and beer from the car.

My heart sank when the deliveries started. A medium-sized truck with ‘PIANO MOVERS’ in huge black letters on the sides was the first to pull up. Three burly men gently moved a wrapped baby grand to the backyard as Dieter supervised with pride. Over the course of the day, more trucks lined up, delivering equipment, microphones, lights and other mysterious things. The big event appeared to be imminent.

No one had said a word to us.

Continued ...

Tags: Neighbornator, jazz