I think all my neighbors just don't care

[KathySRW]

We've had our house for 9 years now! It's on a residential street in North Suburban Minneapolis.

When I was a kid, in the 60's and 70's, in Yakima, Washington, my mom and dad and all us kids knew the names and faces of all our neighbors for blocks all around! And my husband can one-up me. He grew up on an extended family farm in which most of the families for blocks all around were related to him! So we're really disappointed to live in a neighborhood where people come and go from their garages, in their cars. They don't visit each other. The kids know each other. And we kinda know who their parents are, but often we don't even know them very well.

So this week end, my husband and I had a party. We invited his Lions Club lodge, my Sons of Norway lodge, but we also gave printed invitations to 8 families near us. We knocked on their doors and handed the invitations to them in person and told them they were invited to our party.

Only 2 elderly couples came. 6 families & couples we'd invited didn't come. And I peeked over and saw that yes, they were home. They just couldn't be bothered to walk a whole entire 50 paces over to our house for hot dogs and root beer floats.

The party was fun. The weather was great! We spent the whole time in lawn chairs in our back yard, chatting, grilling, enjoying the weather. We figure over the course of 7 hours, about 50 people came and went from our open house party.

But geez, what's wrong with people that not only don't they know their neighbors, but they obviously don't WANT to know their neighbors!

[super_mommy4]

May. 21, 2009 at 9:42 AM

Honey, we've lived in our house for 30 years.  Many of the neighbors I have have been here for over 20 years.  I grew up with these people.  Many of them were home the day 4 men crept around my house for hours and then finally broke in and held me at gun point.  Not one of those people called the police about the suspicious behavior.  But 6 of them came to the police after the fact to tell them what they saw.  They could have prevented this for me b/c the men were in a stolen truck that they shot the owner of. 

[gdawkins]

Jul. 12, 2009 at 7:02 PM

Interesting.. but I think it might have something to do with the times as well..they used to say that we had 'Minnesota Nice' here.. and we DID.  I was born and raised here.. grew up on the southside of minneapolis- right on Powderhorn Park.. back then everyone knew everyone and everyone cared and hung out together.. looked after each other kids... had collective-spontaneous bbq's- just beautiful times.. this was 78- thru the 80's.. it's gotten alot different.  Not sure why- but I miss it.

-G