Moe Fit Right In

We lived in the best neighborhood in the world! There were only five houses on our little cull-de-sac, ours being in the middle. We all had children close to the same ages, we all belonged to the same ward in church, we all had similar backgrounds, and we all were friends.

One night, not long after Moe and I got married, we had a neighborhood block party outside in the middle of our street. One of our neighbors loved camping, so he brought out five dutch ovens and made pizza a peach cobbler for us to eat. All the homes were on large lots, but one family hadn't planted grass yet, so we built a bon fire there and gathered around it to visit, keep warm, and swap stories. It was so much fun.

One of our other neighbors had also remarried shortly after me. Her new husband's name was Butch. We got to meet him for the first time that night, and he turned out to be a nice guy, although the rest of us had a hard time remembering what his name was. The problem was, Moe had brought his hunting dog with him when he married me, and his name was Buck. Since both Buck and Butch were new to our street, it was kind of hard to remember who was who.

Our neighbors also got a kick out of my husband's name. After all, you don't meet that many people named Moe, do you? On my birthday they gave me the cutest card. On the front it said, We couldn't decide what to get you for your birthday, so we decided to use the eeny-meeny-miny-mo method. Inside was a big picture of Mo, from the three stooges, with the words, You Got Mo!

Actually, Moe fit right in with the rest of the neighborhood. He loved swapping hunting stories with the men and he loved playing out on the street with the kids. He even found ways to tease the women.

Each family had a big, black garbage can, provided by the city, that we put out in front of our homes for early Monday morning garbage pick-up. It was annoying to forget, then miss having our garbage collected, so often we would put it out Sunday evening, or even Saturday just to make sure it got picked up.

One Friday night Moe and I came home from a date and noticed our neighbors had already put their garbage can out on the street. They had obviously been doing some spring cleaning, because their can was filled to overflowing, stuffed so full that the lid was held open at least a foot by garbage bags.

Moe turned to me with a gleam in his eye and said, “Do you want to have some fun?”

I couldn't imagine what he was thinking.

“Let's steal their garbage,” he explained. “I'll put it in the back of my truck and put it in the dumpsters at work tomorrow.”

I thought it was a pretty crazy idea, but Moe was so tickled by it I agreed to help. Quietly he backed up his truck, then I helped him lift the garbage can and carefully dump the filled plastic bags into the back of the pickup. Then, just as quietly, Moe drove into our driveway and hid his truck in the garage.

The first thing he asked me when he got home from work the next day was, “Did anyone ask you where their garbage was?”

I hated to disappoint him, but no one had said anything to me about missing garbage. All week Moe waited to hear someone mention a garbage thief, but no one did, and eventually the thrill wore off. Apparently our neighbors hadn't even realized their garbage was stolen, and we had to chalk up our garbage caper as a dud. But then, almost a month later, we were standing around outside, visiting, when this particular neighbor said, “You know, something really strange happened a couple of weeks ago.”

“What?” I asked, totally unprepared for what was coming next.

“Someone stole our garbage! It was the weirdest thing. I put it out early, so I would make sure it was picked up, but the next day the can was completely empty before the garbage men ever came. I thought I was going crazy, but my daughter helped me put it out so she knew I hadn't just imagined it. It was really spooky.”

I laughed, then told her about Moe stealing her garbage..

“He was so disappointed when no one noticed,” I told her laughingly. “He's going to be so glad to hear you actually did.”

“You better believe we noticed,” she said, smiling now that she knew the rest of the story. “We were beginning to wonder if someone was stalking us or something, or maybe if aliens had come down and stolen our garbage to find out what earth life is like or something.”

For years after that, Moe proudly held the title of garbage thief in our neighborhood, and I was glad to know that he had officially become one of us.