A Typical Neighborhood Watch Meeting

Monday night for our monthly Neighborhood Watch Meeting, Lisa brought a snake for the Show & Tell segment, and Ayolane, a naturalist, delivered an impromptu talk about how to identify dangerous snakes we might meet in our gardens:

Sharp-tail, OK; blunt-tail, bad.

The group of about a dozen people went around the circle for our High/Low exercise in which each person tells the high and low points in their life since the last meeting, the best and the worst thing that’s happened to them.

I passed around a 1,500 watt lightbulb and a 2,000-year-old clay lamp from an archaeological excavation. (Just things I happen to have laying around the house).

Using these props I gave a mini-devotional on the phrase, “Ye are the light of the world”. I put a wick and some lighter fluid in the lamp -- and for the first time in 2,000 years, it gave off light.

Officer Craig Grant from the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office reported on crime statistics within a half mile of where we were meeting. He gave us various tips on home and personal security.

Judy distributed tee-shirts with River Celebration logos from our last park clean-up day and we planned the next one.

Again we went around our circle so each person had a chance to speak about whatever concerned them in our neighborhood or in life in general. One person is calling JEA about street lights, another is arranging for branches to be cleared from around a traffic sign.

Then to close, and as the highpoint of the meeting, I told one of my wonderful jokes:

The workman installing wall-to-wall carpet in a home had just finished tacking down the edges or the rug and replacing the molding around the room. He noticed a small lump beneath the carpet in the corner of the room.

Patting his shirt pocket, he said, “Darn. My pack of cigarettes must have dropped out. I’ll have to rip out all the tacks and peel back the rug and…”

Wait just a minute here, he thought. No I won’t have to redo all that work.

He reached in his tool box and pulled out a length of 2X4. He pounded the lump down flat and smoothed out the place, rubbing the 2X4 back and forth over the spot.

Satisfied he packed up his gear and returned to his truck in the drive. As he put his tools away he noticed his pack of cigarettes on the dashboard.

As he tapped one out of the pack, the lady of the house came out saying, “Oh Driver, have you seen my canary? She got out of her cage”.