We Don’t Know Our Neighbors and That’s Killing Us

Whatever happened to community?

My mother, Gloria Jean Berry Mueller, made this dress for a contest at our hometown’s sesquicentennial in 1994. (Photo courtesy of Kay Patterson)

Have you been inside your neighbor’s house? Probably not, and isn’t that strange? Imagine explaining to someone from another era that dozens of people live just steps away from you, and you know nothing about them. No names. No stories. Not even whether they’re OK.

I grew up in a real community

When I lived there, Concord, IL was a town of 200 (now even fewer) with 70 houses in it. At one time or another I was inside every single one of them. I doubt many people today can make such a claim about their hometown.

In 1994, my town celebrated its Sesquicentennial, and my mom, who loved quilting, came up with the idea of quilting a scale model of the town. Everyone received a piece of cloth to represent their lot and was invited to decorate it however they wanted.

And then my mom and other volunteers sewed this into a quilt that now lives in the town hall. One relative newcomer told my mom back then that if he didn’t know where somebody lived, he’d pop into the town hall to consult this “map.”

I took this picture at my sister’s funeral dinner at the Concord Town Hall in 2022. The quilt is a scale model of Concord, IL, made for the town’s sesquicentennial. (Photo by Michelle Teheux)

Enough years have passed that very few people still live where they did when the quilt was made in 1994. My mother died in 1997, and my dad eventually remarried and moved.

My sister still lived in Concord at the time of the Sesquicentennial but later moved to another city. Three years ago she died in a car accident, and I took the picture of the quilt at her funeral dinner.

This is an embroidered picture of the house my parents built with their own hands. I spent the second half of my childhood living here. If you look very closely, you’ll see a secret detail few people ever notice. I’ll tell you about it if you ask me! (Photo by Michelle Teheux)

In the photograph, my parents’ house was the third from right on Locust Street. The first half of my childhood was spent in a trailer located five lots from the right on Morgan — you can’t really see it, but it has a cactus on it and the names of my sister and her then-husband. When they first married they moved a trailer onto the same lot where we grew up.

Virtual isn’t enough

It’s not that I don’t value people I meet and interact with online. I very much do. But the internet allows you to sort through people and speak only to those with whom you have the exact same views and interests. You need never be challenged.

On the internet, I can interact all I want with people just like me.

That’s not how community works.

People who live on your block may very follow a different religion, favor different politics and have different hobbies. You might not feel they’re really your sort.

They will likely have one thing in common with you, however — your income. Our physical address has a lot to do with how much money we have, and that’s never been more true than today.

You used to have a little more mixing of the socioeconomic classes in a neighborhood. The kids of a doctor and factory worker might both go to the same school. Not so much now. We sort people by zip code.

No genuinely rich person lives on my block. If you’re wealthy, no genuinely poor person lives on yours, except perhaps live-in domestic help if you’re really rich.

No billionaire has ever lived in Concord, I feel comfortable saying, but there was a range of socioeconomic groups. Some of the farmers living there or just outside town were quite land-rich and some were and are literal millionaires but nobody had a fancy lifestyle.

You used to know people

As a teenager, I helped with Concord’s annual Burgoo festival. For several years, I took on the task of going from door to door seeking donations. We needed ingredients for the burgoo, a type of stew we cooked all night, and we needed baked goods to sell at the concession stand. I wrote down what everybody said they’d contribute on a sheet of notebook paper.

I knew everybody’s names and who their kids were. I knew which of our two churches they went to or whether they went to a church in another town (we had one Catholic family who had to go elsewhere!) and who didn’t go at all. I usually knew where they worked. If there was any good gossip, I knew that too.

None of us could get away with anything. Somebody would always call my mother and tell on me the minute I even thought about doing something.

You had to get along

Yes, even if you did not particularly like someone. And sometimes you didn’t; this was not some kind of utopia by any means.

Far from it. I did not fit into that conservative community and couldn’t wait to leave. But in retrospect I can appreciate the community aspect of it.

One of my earliest memories is of a major winter storm that caused a power outage that for some reason did not hit my maternal grandparents’ house at the corner of Locust and Main. (It’s the quilt square with a downed tree embroidered on it because my grandfather was a logger.) It was a small house, but it was stuffed with neighbors who came there to stay warm and get something hot to eat. Every single one of them had been there before and knew my grandparents well.

Trying again

I see that not knowing your neighbors is a problem now, so I am trying to do better. We walk our dogs in our neighborhood and strike up conversations whenever we can.

One of our next-door neighbors sometimes comes over for a backyard glass of wine in nice weather. When a storm knocked out a window the same night her sister passed away, my husband made a temporary repair. We would not have even known she’d lost her sister if we hadn’t started talking.

Your neighbors are the ones who’ll pick up your meds, let your dog out or bring chicken soup. If things get as bad in this country as I’m afraid they might, you’ll need your community.

TV lies and real loneliness

Ever notice how often the characters on TV shows and movies know all their neighbors? They have them over for coffee before work and have these enormous holiday parties with a dozen couples dancing in their living room. No doubt some people somewhere actually live like this, but nobody I know does.

And I actually like to have people over. But for me, it’s usually just a handful of guests at a time; I’ve hardly ever had more than a dozen people at a time in my house.

The price of isolation

Many people say they are lonely and there are many reasons for this. The internet is one. Housing policies that sort people into rich and poor neighborhoods is another.

The rise of working wives played a role, too — stay-at-home moms back in the day tended to know their neighbors because their kids actually played together instead of being kept busy with a thousand organized activities that they needed to be driven to. Husbands met people through the socializing efforts of their wives.

So many people work lots of hours, drive home and park right in their attached garages and enter their homes without even seeing a neighbor. They do not sit on their porch in fine weather. Everyone is inside, staring at screens.

More people than ever are single and live alone and couldn’t tell you one thing about any of their neighbors. Of course such people are lonely.

Individuality is a potent drug and one we all enjoy to some extent, but we’re overdosing on it.

We are lonelier, more anxious and more afraid because we don’t know the people right next door. The solution isn’t another app or wellness podcast. It’s chicken soup, shared fences, porch chairs and knock-on-the-door courage. When the power goes out or the world falls apart, it’s your neighbor who will matter most.

About Michelle Teheux

I’m a writer in central Illinois. If you like my work, subscribe to me here and on Medium. I also have a new Substack aimed at authors who want to self-publish books, called The Indie Author. My most recent book is Strapped: Fighting for the soul of the American working class. My most recent novel is The Trailer Park Rules. If you prefer to give a one-time tip, I accept Ko-fi.

All wealthy families are alike; each poor family is poor in its own way.
— Leo Tolstoy, if he had written about a trailer park

For residents of the Loire Mobile Home Park, surviving means understanding which rules to follow and which to break. Each has landed in the trailer park for wildly different reasons.

Jonesy is a failed journalist with one dream left. Angel is the kind of irresponsible single mother society just shakes its head about, and her daughter Maya is the kid everybody overlooks. Jimmy and Janiece Jackson wanted to be the first in their families to achieve the American dream, but all the positive attitude in the world can’t solve their predicament. Darren is a disabled man trying to enjoy his life despite a dark past. Kaitlin is a former stripper with a sugar daddy, while Shirley is an older lady who has come down in the world and lives in denial. Nancy runs the park like a tyrant but finds out when a larger corporation takes over that she’s not different from the residents.

When the new owners jack up the lot rent, the lives of everyone in the park shift dramatically and in some cases tragically.

Welcome to the Loire Mobile Home Park! Please observe all rules.

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