Oddities next door

I’m not sure how I feel about the house next to ours. Don’t get me wrong–I love where I live. The quiet two block street next to the made up Bible college that no one never knows about. A little hidden spot in Downtown Minneapolis.

And, as those little hidden spots tend to be, there are some shady figures around, mainly in the house next to ours.

A few months ago, there were a few fights that sounded like they were turning violent emanating through the wall and into my cracked window. I felt scared. I called Amy at work, and she filed a police report on it and had someone check it out.
Apparently the house had been checked out in the past for inoperable cars on their property and on the street, but nothing else.
There was another day there was a funny smell coming out of their basement, and they kept saying watch it, don’t let it burn!
Meth?
I called that time to report it.

There was no action around there, until a couple days ago. I was coming home from work, went around front to get the mail and came around the side of the house to find someone had pulled a plastic chair up to a window, and was currently entering the house through the window, but was having some trouble with his fat ass. I didn’t know what he was doing, nor did I really want to attract attention to the fact that I was about five feet behind him.

Right now, in their backyard, are four old cars, two guys with hoods completley covering their faces (granted, it is cold), and they look like they’re removing parts from one of the cars, adding stuff, and placing them in another car. At 11pm in the pitch dark (or as pitch black as it gets in a city).

Part of me thinks I should be calling the cops. Another parts of me thinks that I’m from Minnetonka and shouldn’t judge. Maybe these cars need to be worked on, and they’ve been out working all day so now it’s time to be mechanics.

Then Amy noticed one of them had a blow torch.

Chop shop?

I pulled my eyes away from the two hooded men and got my bearings on my vantage point, the second floor balcony on the side of our house. Right across, no more than ten feet from me, is a window into their house. Usually at night all I see is the reflection of the tree that stands between. But tonight their light was on, and I saw a crib. A simple, wooden crib with a pink ribbon tied in one of the rails, and nothing else in the room. No signs of joy for a small life. A wooden crib and industrial cream walls.

I don’t want to keep that baby in danger by not calling. But if my spidey-sense is off, I don’t want to put that baby in danger because I am admittedly elitist.”

I’m going to think about that empty crib room for a long time.