Okay. The first blast of water hit me square in the chest. The second hit the grill. Six racks of ribs hissed under a stream of cold water and smoke rolled across my lawn as Denise Whitmore kept her finger on this. Denise was president of our HOA.
Apparently that afternoon she'd promoted herself to the fire department. "Turn it off." "I warned you about the smoke." There were 12 people on my lawn. One of them was still holding a paper plate.
Another was staring at the donation box Denise had just splashed. I looked at the ribs, then at Denise. "That food was for a fundraiser." "Then find another way to raise money." She lowered the hose.
"Problem solved." That was Denise's mistake. She thought she'd shut down a 12-person barbecue. One week later, 50 motorcycles were coming down our street. Every one of them was headed for my lawn.
And by then, we weren't cooking six racks of ribs. We were roasting a whole pig for charity. Denise stood next door watching them arrive. And somehow, she still thought she was the one in control. I should probably explain how 12 wet people and six ruined racks of ribs turned into 50 motorcycles because I didn't plan any of it.
My name's Jack Dalton. I'm 46, self-employed, and I do HVAC and general maintenance work. The fundraiser had started small on purpose. Our local volunteer rescue squad was raising money to replace some aging emergency equipment. A couple years earlier, those volunteers had been the ones who showed up when my neighbor Frank Delaney went down in his garage with chest pain.
Frank was 72, a retired mechanic, and permanently suspicious of anything manufactured after 1998. He recovered just fine. According to Frank, this was because he was too irritating to die. According to his wife, Linda, the paramedics deserve most of the credit. So, a few of us decided to raise some money.
Nothing huge. I bought the ribs. Frank brought folding chairs. Linda made enough potato salad to survive a regional power outage. We put a clear donation box near my driveway.
12 people showed up. That was the entire operation. My grill was an old black barrel smoker I'd owned for years. It wasn't pretty. Neither am I.
Before coffee, we understood each other. Denise did not. She lived immediately to my right in a two-story gray house with landscaping so precise it looked measured with laboratory equipment. Denise had been president of our HOA for a little over. At first, most people liked having her in charge.
She remembered trash schedules. She followed up on broken streetlights. She stayed on top of landscaping. The problem was that somewhere along the way noted stopped distinguishing between being responsible for the neighborhood and owning it. If your trash can stayed visible too long, Denise noticed if your grass got high while you were away, Denise noticed if somebody's nephew parked a work vehicle overnight, noticed she had a gift or there will be consequences, but definitely a gift.