Snooping, a proud Christmas tradition

Working as a temp for a delivery company during the surge!

Snooping came naturally to me.

Christmas presents?

I used to snoop and find them all.

Now?

I deliver the goods - post haste.

And as we roll around wine country in late November, I witness so much.

I love Nova Scotia in the off season.

We stood at a customers house at the end of some old dirt road.

The truck was turned off.

And for just a moment?

We strained our ears to hear anything at all then relaxed into the utter bliss of a moment of true silence.

While bombing around hills in a van that breaks my butt, I have the opportunity to peer into so many back yards.

LORDY are there ever a LOT of good lookin’ thirty year old truck carcasses kicking around.

This part of the world?

They take car farming from a mere hobby to a true art form.

Young family car farming - duplex, twenty year old ford ranger and some old disposable piece of shit that she drives - It’s got sassy bumper stickers… likely a dog. Moderate sized animal, extraordinarily large shits, tied up out front - “She’s friendly but be careful, she might lick you to death. There’s an arcing minefield of dog shit between you and the door. In order to reach this house you’ll need to play frogger with a dogshit minefield and a swinging pendulum of rope and slobbery hound menacing you as you tap dance among the turds….

My apologies dear reader, I may have gotten lost in the writing for a moment.

But from the young family of car farming, there are the masters of car farming. Multiple generations of car farmers live and work together in a a compound. There are rumours that there are both a Studebaker and a late Model ‘T’ motor and chassis buried back down behind where the old shit pile from the horses used to be.

All of this knowledge of automotive agriculture?

This has come from snooping.

I’m seeing chicken coops and goats and pastures and Clydesdale’s and seeing into people’s backyards and homes.

AND IT’S ONLY BEEN THE FIRST WEEK!

Who knows what otherworldly weirdness awaits?

It’s fun for a nosey guy, just to show roll up to someone’s house, be able to see how they set up their property, how they keep things and generally how they live.

Each delivery I get a little sniff about who these people are in these rural communities just by where they live and how they keep their yards.

So while I deliver packages to people and try to sneak away without them knowing I’m there, they, by allowing me up to the door, allow just a glimpse of who they are.

I’m bringing them something they’ve been waiting for.

All while I also get the opportunity to imagine who is this person? What are they like? What is it like to be them?

You know, that game you play on a bus when everyone aboard is more or less aware of the others aboard with them and you catch enough of a glimpse of them then you start imagining a bunch of stuff about them…

Or maybe it’s just me doing this.

But each day at work? It’s so satisfying to take impressions of how hundreds of new people might be by taking impressions of how their stories written in the spaces they occupy.

You get a feel for how people are by being in their backyard.

I’ve spent a lot of time in a lot of new back yards recently.

You could call me a back yard man.

But each back yard?

Each one tells a story long enough to make the slightest impression but short enough that it couldn’t really be told without too much embellishment.

Each day on delivery I’m hit by impressions of people and their lives as one gets hit by the dappled light on a drive through a late day forest.

None of it really sticks enough to become a story.

And yet…

Isn’t that just what we do as humans?

We make up stories about each other from a patchwork of dappled light.

And?

We snoop.

You, dear reader are, in some way, snoopy.

Curious.

And of course?

A fool.