Robert Frost once wrote that good fences make good neighbors—but in the case of the Vasbinder and Moorkamp families, sharing a common space brought them closer together. Their Webster Groves homes share a driveway, and “being only 13 feet apart…you witness how a family is on a very personal level,” says Dave Vasbinder.
Jim and Nancy Moorkamp had lived in their house for about 14 years when Dave and Emily Vasbinder moved in next door in 2006. Dave says his house was a bit of a fixer-upper, and he was frequently outside working in the yard. When Jim came home from work at PGAV Architects, he often wandered over to see what Dave was up to.
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“It was not too long that he had the work gloves on and we were both up to our waist in a trench digging a ditch and installing drain tile or something like that,” recalls Dave. Jim was always there, offering suggestions, tools, and sometimes manpower.
Their families grew close as well. The Vasbinders were a young couple new to the area and learning about homeownership for the first time, with children still a few years away. But the Moorkamps already had two children, as well as years of experience with home renovation.
“It is interesting and extraordinary how much, if you choose to, you can embrace the other side of the driveway into your life,” Dave says. “Walking out the door and seeing kids up and down the driveway—before we even had kids—was really a window into the future for us.”
Now the Moorkamps’ children have grown up and moved away, and the Vasbinders’ twins are the ones playing in the driveway.
Jim died in 2013, and the families’ friendship has adapted to this new stage. Over the last few years, Dave has cut down a dead maple tree in Nancy’s yard, rebuilt her stone retaining wall, and helped pump out the water in her basement when it flooded. He also clears the snow from the families’ driveway—as well as about half a dozen other driveways in the neighborhood.
“He reminds me of us when we first moved into the house,” Nancy says. “My husband had that kind of energy.”
But it isn’t just the neighbor on the other side of the driveway who makes this quiet street a great place to live, say Dave and Nancy. The neighbors around them often get together for happy hours, barbecues, and impromptu gatherings. If two neighbors stop to chat on a nice day, others will soon join in.
Looking back, Dave says, it didn’t even occur to him and Emily at the time that sharing a driveway could be a gamble, but he’s so thankful for the “extraordinary circumstance” they’ve found themselves in: “We can’t imagine anywhere else we’d want to be.”
This story appears in DesignSTL’s “The Power of Neighbors” feature. Read more of those stories here.
