Crazy Louie

Theskinnyonbenny photo bot is a bluesky account that reaches back into the depths of my daily photos, picks one at random, and posts it. The other day, it posted this one:

Goofball Louie from next door brought over his entire ice tray on Friday night. Originally posted June 13, 2006 on theskinnyonbenny.com

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— theskinnyonbenny photo bot (@photobot.theskinnyonbenny.com) March 24, 2026 at 8:31 AM

That made me wonder how much I had talked about crazy Louie at the time, and it turns out that the answer is "not much." I introduced him at the end of this post, and then there's the picture above from 2006. As far as I can tell, that's it.

Louie is just one drop in the great big bucket of crazy that was our next door neighbors. When we moved in, there was an older married couple. They were nice enough, and the only annoying thing that I remember was that they liked to garden while listening to loud jazz music very early on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Not the best for neighbors when we were in our 20s and liked to stay up late. Hell, I wouldn't really want that as a neighbor here in my 50s.

After them was a single guy named Jim. He was a great neighbor, who showed me a bunch of house things that I was too young and dumb to figure out myself. He gave me a step-by-step on setting up landscape lighting -- the unused skeletons of which are still under our deck or buried in dirt, and in setting up a watering system which while substancially altered, is still in use today.

Jim's girlfriend was lovely as well. She didn't live there, but came by often, and when she found something great and fresh at the farmers' market, she bought extra for us. That girlfriend passed away, and despite Mrs. theskinnyonbenny's suspicions, I'm 99.9% sure that Jim did not murder her.

After a while, Jim moved up to a fancier neighborhood, and he rented the house to a bunch of college guys. They set up a pool table outside our bedroom window and were super noisy at all hours. They once even had a live band in the back yard at midnight on a Wednesday. Not the best neighbors, but nowhere close to the worst.

After them was the lady from the post I linked above, followed by crazy Louie and his boyfriend, who was an LSU cop who looked about 14 years old.

I don't actually remember Louie bringing his whole ice tray over. Maybe we were having drinks and ran out of ice. I do remember him calling to ask to print something, and when told it was okay, showing up with a whole desktop computer, with seperate keyboard, mouse, and monitor. I had been expecting a thumb drive.

Louie's pretty dog went missing, and he wrote this long diatribe addressed to the mail man begging him to find the poor thing.

The guys only lived there a short time, but I think we must have hung out quite a bit. I have lots of memories of weird non sequitors and this sort of manic energy coming from Louie. For a few weeks, he sold Cutco knives. He called on the Sharples family and told them "I live next door to the Schlotzes," despite the fact that they had met many times and that this is only a loose approximation of our last name.

Toward the end of their stay, Louie got dark. He faked that he had cancer, got some sympathy, and then when asked questions, showed that he had no idea about any of the most basic facts about cancer. Like he couldn't say what type of cancer it was and didn't realize that tumors were something associated with cancer. I think he might have only heard the word on a TV show.

I'm sure that somewhere out there, Louie is the subject of someone's podcast.

After Louie and his boyfriend, Jim sold the house to the wildest neighbor of all. I will have to re-up my subscription with my keyboard in order to have enough letters to write about that one, so I'll have to save her for another day.

It's worth mentioning that the house on the other side of us is newly on the market. If you are interested in me writing 1000 words about how crazy you are 20 years from now, this is the opportunity for you.