“Being a good neighbor is an art which makes life richer.” — Gladys Taber (1899–1980), book author and columnist for Ladies’ Home Journal.
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The tall, gray-haired fellow walked slowly toward me from the small house next door. I was copying the phone number from a “For Sale” sign nailed to a pine tree on a lot at Lake Murvaul in East Texas.
At that moment, I had no idea I was meeting one of the best neighbors anyone could ever have.
This was years ago. Before the “art of neighboring” was killed by five-inch glowing rectangles and buried under a pile of unread text notifications. Before phone screens replaced the loving attention we once gave to family, friends, and the folks living next door.
“Looking to buy a place on the lake?” the old fellow quizzed me that afternoon. “Good fishin’ here. You’ll like it,” he continued. His thinning gray hair and weathered face revealed his age in years. His smile, twinkling eyes, and friendly curiosity uncovered a much younger heart.
“I love this lake, wouldn’t live anywhere else. Retired and moved here from Dallas 17 years ago.”
I bought the property and spent that summer preparing it for a new home, Mr. Bill made the time and the work tolerable. “How ’bout a glass of tea?” became a frequent greeting many afternoons.
“Come on, sit down,” he always laughed. “I got a new joke for you.” No one laughed louder or longer at Mr. Bill’s jokes than he did.
“Come over for supper later. Katherines fixin’ pork chops. I might save you one.”
After we moved in, Mr. Bill and Miz Katherine quickly “adopted” my children. He timed his afternoon coffee with the arrival of the school bus. “Y’all better get over here,” he’d greet them. “Katherine just made cookies.”
“Bug” was the name my daughter, Robin, selected for the scruffy Terrier mutt she adopted, but Bill called the puppy “Bitsey.” Robin constantly corrected him to no avail, but by any name, the dog soon became Bill’s “bus alert.”
Before his failing ears caught it coming, the dog’s head popped up toward the arriving bus.
Good hearing was not a requirement for Bill’s fishing, however. You could hear his boat on many mornings, heading out at full throttle before the sun came up on the cove.
“Catch anything?” I’d quiz him later.
“Naw,” he’d laugh. “One tried to jump on my hook, but I talked him out of it.”
More than one Saturday morning, he was at my back door. “Got any more of that coffee? Katherine won’t let me have any more. Says I don’t need it. And if she calls, don’t you tell her I’m over here,” he’d laugh, pouring himself a cup.
It was Miz Katherine who determined one day that it was time to move closer to family in Ft. Worth.
“Crazy woman,” Bill said, shaking his head that evening on the back porch. “I came to this lake to stay.” He protested to everyone, except Miz Katherine, of course. The “For Sale” sign went up on the hilltop place they had called home for 20 years.
“Where ya’ going?” I asked one afternoon, seeing him heaving suitcases into the car.
“Goin’ to see the kids,” he replied. Looking around to make sure Miz Katherine wasn’t within earshot, he smiled and said, “If anyone stops to look at the house, tell ’em it’s eaten up with termites, the roof leaks, and the plumbing’s shot.”
“Got ’cha,” I laughed. “Have a good trip.”
The little place next door eventually sold, and they moved away. Coincidentally, about that same time, opportunity called me to Boerne in the Texas Hill Country where I stayed for about five years before returning to East Texas and to Lake Murvaul a second time.
Even today, however, having been away from that lake many years, when someone talks about how we used to have good neighbors, I still think about one who made my life richer.
Looking for another cup of coffee, laughing and saying, “I got a new joke for you…”
—Leon Aldridge
(PHOTO ABOVE: Sunset view from my pier at Lake Murvaul in East Texas, circa early 1990s where my neighbor, Mr. Bill, and I frequently enjoyed coffee, conversation, and a new joke.)
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Leon Aldridge is a veteran editor, publisher, and communications professional, currently enjoying semi-retirement while awaiting the next challenge. His columns appear in: The Center Light and Champion, The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche, the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.
© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2026. Feel free to use excerpts with full and clear credit given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling.’
A Story Worth Telling 