Neglected news, and a WWJD moment

I forgot to report that I did finally meet the owner of the property across the street, site of the arson fire and home of Garry the Exceptional Oak (in case you missed these thrilling tales, see here, here and here). He showed up one day with a buddy and I went over to talk to him. He seems very nice and swears that he will preserve Garry, who he says is featured in some book about the history of Seattle. He figures he'll buy a copy of that book and put it on the counter of that house when it's finally built and up for sale. Maybe that will help him get more money to make up for the fact that he'll have to build a pretty small house on that lot in order to preserve Garry.

He also said he found out about the arson fire when a neighbor got his phone number off the Land Use Notice sign and called; neither the police nor the fire department contacted him. That made me feel a little badly that I hadn't just called the guy myself.

Shortly before my first encounter with the owner, there was a man over there salvaging scrap metal out of the house. You really have to see the place to imagine how unpleasant that sounds. The house is blackened and smelly, with jagged debris all over the ground, and probably some asbestos dust in the air - and on this particular day it was hot. The guy looked old, and tired, and like maybe he lived out of his van. He was dragging bits of metal out and busting it apart with tools that didn't look quite adequate to the job, and heaving it into his van alongside a big bag of empty soda cans.

Last week, this guy was back, along with a buddy who stopped by periodically. But this time I didn't see much work going on. The guy mostly sat in his van, and he and his buddy stayed up late at night chatting on the street. The next morning we realized they had slept in their cars out there, and by the second evening I faced a dilemma. Do I call the police and hassle these guys? When confronted with an old man who makes a living salvaging scrap metal from dangerous wrecks with crappy tools, I'm not sure I want to make his life harder just because it makes me uncomfortable to see him on my tidy middle-class street, you know what I mean? I had a sincere "What Would Jesus Do?" moment, and not in the weird sense of those little bracelets, but in the sense of questioning how I should behave towards unfortunate people who make me want to look away.

But they were drinking and doing some drugs out there, which I normally don't get all hysterical over so long as there's no dealing going on, but given the recent spate of criminal activity and that fact that these guys seemed to be sort of homesteading over there, I finally picked up the phone and called the property owner.

Had he authorized this guy to work at the house, I asked? Yes, the guy saw the house was being torn down and asked if he could do some salvaging. Well, I said, they appear to be living in their cars out there and are rather loud at night; could the owner give me any sense of how long I might expect them to stay? There was a long pause. I'll be right over, he said. And he was.

So I guess it was a good choice, because I learned that the owner is serious and responsive and not particularly interested in pissing off the neighbors. And it got the guys out of here without having to sic the police on them, which really, wouldn't have been the highest and best use of law enforcement resources. Those poor guys don't need to be in jail; the gang of professional burglars cleaning out my entire neighborhood do. But still, it nags at me a little, the right thing to do in such circumstances.