22/365 My mystery neighbors

I back up onto an alley, as most south siders do, and directly behind me is a two-family. It's on the smaller side--my parents' two-family, now converted, has two giant floors and a smaller third floor. This one is two floors, each only slightly bigger than mine, if at all. It used to be owned by Minnie, who lived there with her two overgrown teenaged boys and their chained dogs. It got to be too much for her once they left for college, and so she sold it.

A person didn't buy it. A real estate company did. Quick and dirty rehab (if anything at all, come to think of it) and slapped it on the rental market. Renters came and went pretty fast the first two years or so. Nobody's sticking around. This is depressing for many reasons--I know the people next door to them very well, and on the other side is a 4-family that has been converted to the tiniest condos on earth. But at least the building was well done ("high-end" as the buzz word around here goes). This one in between the good owners and the condos is a mess.

So there's some sort of group of people living on the first floor, and nobody on the second. At night, I'll come down to the kitchen and see the guy with his beard and long hair (yes, I know my husband has a beard and long hair, but having been raised in a family of hoosiers with beards and long hair, I'm always hesitant) standing on the back porch smoking. Staring straight at my house. He can see me move around in the kitchen as well as I can see him standing there with his beard and long hair, smoking. This makes me want to sneak around the kitchen at night.

Sometimes a woman stands out there in the morning. No beard, but smoking.

They have a big black truck with friendly bumper stickers--the independent radio station on the corner; politics I may or may not agree with more or less. And they've never introduced themselves or made themselves a nuisance.

So that is fine. But now there's a tent. Have you ever put a tent up in your backyard, say, to air it out after camping? Or to let your kids "camp" in your backyard? How long do you leave it up? A day? A weekend?

It's been up for almost a month now. They've moved it at least once to change where the door to the tent faced. They're paying attention to the tent, at least somewhat. I can't fathom what's going on.

So I'm ignoring it for now.