{"id":25987,"date":"2018-11-15T21:00:12","date_gmt":"2018-11-16T03:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidmcelroy.org\/?p=25987"},"modified":"2019-05-29T14:36:02","modified_gmt":"2019-05-29T19:36:02","slug":"i-dont-care-where-pedro-is-from-but-im-happy-hes-my-neighbor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=25987","title":{"rendered":"I don\u2019t care where Pedro is from, but I\u2019m happy he\u2019s my neighbor"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When I heard a loud crash outside my house Wednesday night, I thought a tree had blown over onto my roof.<\/p>\n

It’s been stormy here for the last few days, so I feared that the rain and wind had weakened a tree enough to bring it crashing down. I didn’t see any breaks in the roof from the inside, though, so I ran out my front door into the cold rain.<\/p>\n

My next-door neighbor came out of his house 30 seconds later, asking me if I knew what it was. It took us a couple of minutes to realize the crash had come from my back yard. We found several sections of a huge branch that had collapsed from a tree.<\/p>\n

The falling pieces had avoided my house, but damaged the back-yard fence. The main section was about 25 feet long and there were several smaller sections. I was lucky that it was just some chain-link fence that was damaged instead of my house.<\/p>\n

The neighbor told me he could help me fix the fence after work Thursday — although I didn’t figure anything would come of that — and then we both ran back inside to get out of the rain.<\/p>\n

When I looked at the damage in the light of Thursday morning, I was dismayed.<\/p>\n

The fence was damaged badly enough that the gate was hanging loose and wouldn’t come close to shutting. That section of the fence was a shambles. And there were a lot more broken limbs than I’d seen Wednesday night.<\/p>\n

I spent a lot of the day Thursday dreading having to go home and deal with the mess. Even if I left the limbs right where they had fallen, I couldn’t let Lucy outside by herself since the fence wouldn’t close and there were breaks in the fence. So I knew I would be out there tonight in 32-degree weather trying to figure out how to temporarily cover the breaches until I could get a fence company to come repair it.<\/p>\n

I was also dreading the cost, because chain-link fence work can be expensive.<\/p>\n

I worked a little late Thursday evening showing a house. By the time I finished dinner and drove home, it was after 8 p.m. It had been dark for hours — and I still had some work to do in the cold, wet weather.<\/p>\n

As I got out of my car and started toward the house, I realized Pedro had come out of his house to see me.<\/p>\n

“I fixed your fence,”<\/em> he said in a very matter-of-fact way.<\/p>\n

I thought he might be kidding, but he was serious. I bolted toward the side of the house to take a look at what had been a broken mess when I had left the house.<\/p>\n

The gate hung in perfect shape, latched just as it was supposed to.<\/p>\n

“I know you let your dog out when you come home,” <\/em>he said, “so I thought I should have it fixed before you got here.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Pedro showed me the repairs he had made. He showed me a couple of places where he had used wire to shore up damaged parts. The fence was actually stronger than before the damage.<\/p>\n

Then I realized that all the broken branches were gone. He had used a saw to cut up the pieces, which he had hauled to the street for the city to pick up. There was nothing left for me to do.<\/p>\n

I was overcome with gratitude. I asked him how much I owed him, because he had done quite a bit of work.<\/p>\n

Pedro didn’t want any money, but I insisted. He relented and admitted that he had had to go buy one $5 part, so he would let me reimburse him for that. But he really didn’t seem to want anything.<\/em><\/p>\n

Pedro just wanted to help — and he wanted me to have my fence fixed by the time I needed it when I got home.<\/p>\n

So when I finally went inside a few minutes later, I was able to open the kitchen door and let Lucy run out into the back yard — as I do every evening — because Pedro had cared enough to help me.<\/p>\n

I don’t know where Pedro is from. He speaks English well enough, but it’s heavily accented. He’s from a Central or South American country. Mexico most likely.<\/p>\n

I couldn’t care less where he’s from. I’m just happy to have Pedro as my neighbor, because he’s the kind of neighbor everybody ought to have.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I heard a loud crash outside my house Wednesday night, I thought a tree had blown over onto my roof. It’s been stormy here for the last few days, so I feared that the rain and wind had weakened a tree enough to bring it crashing down. I didn’t see any breaks in the Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[466,337,465],"class_list":{"0":"post-25987","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"tag-hispanic","8":"tag-immigration","9":"tag-neighbor","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1x9iR-6L9","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25987"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28960,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25987\/revisions\/28960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}