Part-Timer.(NEWS)

IT WOKE ME FROM MY MIDDAY slumber, the blare of my neighbor's leaf blower raking the window and forcing me up from the couch. The cats, toofour perfectly sound naps upset by the routine chores of autumn.

After the first real snowfall, the dining-room window will endure similar as Dave clears a driveway that hugs the west end of my lot. It leaves little place for his snow to go but to be packed against the bricks of our two houses, and except for the noise of his snowblower, I suffer him the job without complaint. The closeness of quarters is part of the charm of such a neighborhood, with its 100-year-old homes and towering oak trees and proximity to all points urban and suburban. So neighbors bring one another food and ask after one another's children and make concessionsfor barking dogs and garbage cans left out too long and the blowing of leaves and snowwhere necessary.

Of course, I suspect my neighbor does not mind his chores. Rather, I think they give him yet more excuse to do what so many men, though feigning protest, look forward to doing: playing with engines.

I first "met Dave almost six years ago, the snarl of his leaf blower spitting to life at 7:01 a.m. on the first ...