- December 16, 2025
Loretta McCray, of Elder Place, recently received help from her neighbors with a tiresome chore.
While socializing, McCray mentioned that her backyard needed to be cleared of debris. Her neighbors responded that they would take care of it.
“I did not take them seriously, for I knew the degree of work that needed to be done, and I knew they did also,” McCray wrote in an email.
But without hesitation, her neighbors, David Ryone, Earl Walters, Janice Barson, John Silva, Kathy Doherty and Terry Taylor, showed up the next morning to tackle the task.
“It was a dirty and nasty job,” McCray said. “They attacked poison ivy, poison oak, fire ants, lizards, all kinds of bugs to get the job done.”
The neighbors also cut back bushes, prickly shrubbery and reached sky high with ladders and pruning tools to remove dead branches out of the trees that threatened to fall at any minute.
“My yard looks beautiful,” McCray said. “They refused any compensation, and their good cheer never left them from the beginning to the end of the job.”
There was only one catch: All but one of the helpers got poison ivy.
