Letter From America: Rob Long.(Fred Rogers and "Mister Rogers")(Obituary)

Rob Long

A few years ago, I had trouble with one of my neighbors. It began over such things as trash-can placement, fence maintenance and misdirected mail. It escalated into larger, more complicated disagreements--like whether the alley behind our houses is a good place for homeless people to set up camp. She: "Sure, fine." Me: "Get the hose."

Funny, but at such moments an image from childhood would often pop into my head--that of a sweet-tempered man flickering on our black-and-white television screen. His name was Fred Rogers--Mister Rogers, to us--and each episode of his quiet, thoughtful show, "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," began with a simple song that is now etched into the brains of most Americans under 50. "It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood/It's a beautiful day for a neighbor/Would you be mine?"

Each episode would open the same way: Mr. Rogers would enter a spare living- room set wearing a jacket and tie. As he warbled his happy anthem, in his distinctive watery voice, he'd change out of his nice dress shoes into a pair of sneakers. Off would come the jacket, on would go a nice cardigan sweater. In other words, he'd change into his "play clothes," just as we kids did. The thrust of Mr. Rogers's philosophy was that talking things out was the only true path to conflict resolution (he used different words, of course) and that we should never be ashamed of our feelings.

So that's what I had in mind, one day, after a tense week of cold-war glares across the fence, when I tapped into my inner Mr. Rogers and knocked on my neighbor's door.

She opened it, just a crack.

"Hi," I began. "You know, I think we've gotten off on the wrong foot. I appreciate your compassion for the homeless. But, well, you see, maybe we could get the lovely couple that lives in the box my refrigerator came in to, oh, I don't know, not defecate quite so close to my kitchen window..."