My old neighbour was the strangest man I ever knew

While our old neighbour was strange, my family became quite fond of him, writes Phillip Adams. Picture: istock

The strangest man I ever knew was named, scout’s honour, Jack Stranger. Jack was our next-door neighbour in the very nice suburb of Hawthorn East, his family home considered a threat to property values. His mum, who died shortly after our arrival, was the local “cat lady”, her jungle of a garden home to a herd of ferals. She and her son were also notorious hoarders – in Jack’s case, this meant tottering towers of old newspapers. Jack justified the rats’ nest and fire hazard by explaining that he might want to refer to an old Age or Herald, but in all the years we knew him never did.

It was impossible to tell how old Jack was. He was wiry framed, rarely shaved and never washed. His BO could, like the Great Wall, be detected from outer space. Even during his mother’s life his diet consisted of bran stirred into cans of fruit salad. Though his BO denied him entry to the Adams family home, we would buy extra Chinese food to share with him on Sunday nights. The first time we took this goodwill gift over to him, he told us he’d never had hot food before. His way of thanking us was to collect fruit and veggies that had bounced off trucks leaving the Victoria Market. Knowing a pot-holed spot well, he would retrieve the odd bruised lettuce or battered bunch of beetroot. Thanks Jack – and the donation would discreetly be added to the compost heap.

Somewhere “on the spectrum”, Jack was a savant – his day job involved keeping a mental inventory for a business selling nuts, bolts and screws. After years of devoted service they bought a computer and gave Jack the sack. Within weeks they were begging him to come back. A small triumph for man over machine.

Jack had a sex life of sorts – it involved hiring a working girl twice a year, getting her to dress in a skin-tight black rubber cozzie then engaging in sword fights with her. Speaking of fights, he would turn the back yard into a vast battlefield for war games, deploying cardboard tanks and soldiers for conflicts that could last for days or weeks. Or until it rained.

But Jack’s greatest passion was for trams. With the slightest encouragement he would take me on virtual tram rides anywhere in Melbourne’s sprawling system, mouthing the sound effects. Right down to the specific noises the bogies made when changing or crossing tracks at the nexus of St Kilda Junction.

Jack’s car, a rust-bucket Fiat, had a permanently flat battery, requiring both of us to push it out of his overgrown driveway to jump-start in our gently sloping street. It was a fortnightly occurrence because he needed to buy more cans of fruit salad.

Did I mention Jack’s infinite curiosity? He would squat for hours over an ants’ nest, watching their comings and goings.

Despite his BO and total lack of toilet training (a topic I cannot bring myself to describe in this family magazine) my family became quite fond of him. And he of us. We recall him saying – even threatening – to die if we ever left Kildare Street.

Which, in the strangest part of the strange Jack Stranger story, is what he did. On the day our family moved out, Jack squatted down in his jungle of a garden, as if to study his final ants’ nest … and simply, quietly, died.