A couple of weeks ago, my neighbor Travis came over and replaced my walkway. I helped as much as I could but he did most of the work and provided all of the talent. To give you an idea of what that means, first we bashed out all the old concrete, which was thicker than expected, and loaded it by hand into his pickup truck. Then we hauled it to the concrete-crushing place and unloaded it, by hand. The scale said that we had unloaded 2,300 pounds. Next, Travis dug out and framed the pour area.

Then we bought 39 bags of concrete (at 60 pounds a bag) and rented a mixer. We spent a day mixing, pouring and spreading the concrete and doing whatever Travis did to make it look nice. We cleaned up and Travis put his mound of concrete finishing tools away. I didn’t even mention when Travis saw some road base on Facebook Marketplace, and we went and picked that up in his other truck. We put that down before we poured the concrete.

I’m flattening our little backyard area to put in a patio. I got it all pretty level and then neighbor Randy loaned me his tamper to really get it right. Travis had already loaned me a long 2×4. I was using neighbor Marka’s shovel to spread the dirt around. I’ve been sitting on that shovel since spring. Marka’s husband Quresh has been teaching me tai chi. I consider that a gift. Once this summer they had a guest and I loaned them a bicycle and once before they had a guest who borrowed my guitar. Their kids have taken care of our dogs.

I just got a note from Travis saying that he’ll be around next week to blow out our little sprinkler systems, as he does every year.

I’m not sure just why I’m writing all this about our neighborhood. I was just reading Katie’s story about food insecurity and utility assistance and the need for childcare. She talks about how the need is real and how we can all get involved.

Time, treasure and talent are the holy trinity of giving and it seems that we all have some or all of that. I have been a volunteer for this and that over the years. I have always found it worthwhile. I like the people I meet and the perspective tweak it gives me. And you don’t have to make an ongoing commitment. You can do a project, or you can sit on a board or you can get into the thick of it and roll up your sleeves.

Back to our neighbors: I think that as I was mulling this little column, I kept coming around to how we support each other in our little corner just because. And those little ‘just becauses’ are what bring us together to have conversations, to create ties, to be there for each other to hear about work or family or whatever. Not in grand gestures but in everyday-life kind of ways.

I like that.

Scott