[rcooled]

There used to be a single guy in his late 70s living in the house next door to me who was quite a character. He was born and raised in that house and never married. We would hang at the fence between our yards while he told stories of his adventures as a younger man. Among other things, he'd worked as a bush pilot up in Alaska and as a lumberjack in the Pacific Northwest. Frank always seemed to be in good health and never complained about any aches or pains. Then one day I saw him with a black eye and his arm in a sling. He tells me that he clipped the wind sock pole while landing his small home-built single-seater on a tiny private air field near here and wrecked his plane. He said that he was giving up on planes, and went on to say that he'd he been flying without a license for the last 20 years! He wasn't giving up on flying though and had put an addition onto his garage so he could build himself a small helicopter. When he showed it to me once, it appeared to be about 50% complete, but he never got to fly it. Sadly, Frank fell off his roof one day while repairing his chimney and that was the end of that.
Among his other interests, Frank was also an avid dumpster-diver and he liked to share his finds with the neighbors. I would sometimes come home from work to find a bag of moldy potatoes or mushy cucumbers on my doorstep. Funny thing is, Frank didn't need to do this. I learned from the relatives who came to clean out his house after he passed that Frank's family was quite well off and had large land holdings up in northern California.

Yes, there certainly are some interesting people out there...