Inquiring minds

I’ve officially become the Nancy Drew of Esopus. Lately, there has been a lot of activity in the house that’s next door to us. (It’s not the house next door of the man who wants to adopt Gilday as his new and only son.) The house I’m speaking of, we’ll call it the “Woodchuck” house, has had little to no activity around it since we moved nest door to it almost 2 years ago. It is owned by an older gentleman who owns a painting company with his brother.

Since we moved in, the daily routine was like clockwork. Van stopped and picked him up in the morning, get back some time around 4, maybe run some errands, and then turn off all the lights and be in bed by 8. That is, until Woodchuck had a heart attack in September. He then went to live at his girlfriend’s house until he felt better.

There would still be some activity; the company van would stop in every other morning, the Woodchuck and his girlfriend would stop in every once and while, and then toward the end of January, things seemed to go back to normal.

Then, we started noticing more and more activity going on. Yes, the van would come every day, but there was more. Since February rolled around, each weekend, there seemed to be 3-4 cars in the driveway. On Presidents day (we had off and it snowed) there was a random kid shoveling the Woodchucks driveway, sidewalk and his porch, and the walked over to Gilday (who was shoveling our driveway) and asked him if he could shovel our walkway for some cash. Very strange indeed.

Then I noticed the same new people hanging around. A 35’ish year old guy, who looks like he should be at a NASCAR race, a 35’ish bleached blond women smoker who looks like she cant find her trailer, and a couple of kids. They never stay the night, but they are moving things in and out of the house.

This weekend really bewildered me. Yesterday, I saw NASCAR guy moving a bookcase in the house, and then later on in the day, I saw 2 other cars pull in, park, and then they were loading stuff from the house into their cars. One guy even made a couple trips. And no, Woodchuck did not pass away. I happened to see him on Friday evening and Saturday morning.

Is he selling the house? Getting the house ready to rent out? Is some of his family moving in? Did the family use his house as storage and now they need to get their stuff out? So, its my new mission to randomly bump into the Woodchuck and get to the bottom of this.

This is my new obsession. I will find out. Somehow, someway, I will find out…