WDCS178 'Neighbour Trouble' - 1955

Synopsis:
Donald Duck moves to a quieter neighbourhood in order to get a good night's sleep. But he soon forgets his good intentions...

Comments:
Donald succeeds in finding a new and absolutely quiet place called Old Lace Manor in a gentle part of town, and he and the nephews move in immediately (strangely, the kids did not seem to have been bothered by the noise nor were they even informed of the move!). The manor house contains three apartments with an author and a cheese-taster as the other tenants.
Despite all good intentions of being a good neighbour, it does not take long before Donald starts a zany noise war with his next door neighbour, the author, who writes all his books by hand using a quill pen in order not to disturb his surroundings. But a paranoid Donald soon finds an excuse for starting a lengthy - and noisy - brawl which ends in an ear-drum splitting crescendo, when the neighbour upstairs takes over and blows his alpenhorn, which sends a deafened Donald to the hospital.
Barks made a number of stories in which the Duck family moved around, but this is the only one in which the events had a real substance. We perceive the family as living in the same house most of the time, but this is not correct; in fact they were never living in the same house in any of the stories! In some stories they were even out of their usual habitat. Examples: A log cabin in FC0178 Christmas on Bear Mountain, a hotel in U$56 Mystery of the Ghost Town Rail Road, a motel in WDCS269 A Matter of Factory, and a South Pole igloo in WDCS264 Master Wrecker...
Even though the story at first glance is a straightforward havoc-raising slapstick comedy Barks must have enjoyed dreaming up the many gadgets and contrivances his characters used with no distinction to idle credibility. Who will ever forget the scene in which the unobtrusive author suddenly goes amuck hopping furiously on two bicycle horns attached to his feet? Or the fact that Donald mysteriously has a fully workable air raid siren at  his disposal?

Barks' comments:
I guess among the very best ones is a 10-page story of Donald, where he got to complaining about everything being too noisy and he moves to a very quiet place, and he was not satisfied until everything was absolutely silent around him. He went around everywhere seeing if there was any noise he could pick up.
Donald is naturally the loudest one of all. That's really good, and even the secondary figures are well done, for example the cheese-taster who blows his alpenhorn.

From 1951 to 1952 Barks began a somewhat nomadic life as he lived in various places in the San Jacinto area. Nothing is known about his short-time whereabouts except that he, at one point, lived in an apartment in a remodeled sub-divided warehouse. This was not a happy time for Barks; back then he was alone and trying to pick up his life after having divorced his second wife, Clara Balken. To top it all he had conflicts with inconsiderate and annoying neighbours; on one side a couple played loud music, and upstairs an alcoholic woman was knocking empty bottles about every night. This firsthand knowledge of the challenges of living in an apartment was used a few years later in the neighbour story.

The topic of alcoholism was well known to Barks, as he had encountered this human downside firsthand on several occasions; when he was employed at the girlie magazine The Calgary EyeOpener in Minneapolis most of the other employees took to drink on a steady basis, and the female editor and her friends boozed around the clock thus squandering any profit the magazine might have had. It was also in Minneapolis Barks met Clara, who, over the years, developed a severe drinking problem that eventually took her life: She became more and more of an alcoholic. She had a lot of talent for cooking, sewing ... and drinking. She came from a family that had a long record of alcoholism. And she just loved the taste of liquor.
In 1951 they were divorced: I paid her 250 dollars a month alimony for 13 years! Always paid her every month, and she used it to buy more booze. Eventually she just died of cirrhosis of the liver. It was alcohol that killed her and it took 13 years to do it.

A small insight into Barks' daily life was offered in the story's last scene in which Donald is hospitalized. He is furnished with a modern hearing aid after he has been momentarily deafened by the massive alpenhorn tones. Barks had firsthand knowledge of this type of predicament as he became increasingly more hard of hearing as time went by. It was only in his last years - after having tried many types of hearing aids -  he was fortunate enough to get two specially developed hearing aids from Denmark that his hearing was successfully improved.

It is remarkable how few speaking characters are featured in the story, namely 8 in all, of which 5 of them could have been easily omitted (the nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie have practically nothing to contribute to the story flow, and a wife and a hospital nurse are just seen in one panel each)! But on the other hand the 3 remaining characters are extremely interesting.

First of all we have Donald who is instigating the events with his highly neurotic and reckless behaviour. We have probably never before seen Barks' Donald in such a free fall of epic, irresponsible proportions but we must admire Donald's inexhaustible vigour although he is not at all portrayed in any disarming ways.

Donald's chief adversary (in his own mind!) is blissfully unaware of the fact that Donald is on the prowl in futile attempts to catch the quiet man next door in noisy situations. He is really an author who prefers writing his novels quietly using a quill pen instead of a noisy typewriter. But Donald is on to him after an imaginary wrongdoing, which escalates to immense heights from both sides during the story. It is plausible that the author is of British origin; at least he starts off by softly exclaiming: I say, old chap. Desist!

The upstairs tenant is an old, retired cheese-taster from the Alps, who only wants peace and quiet in his daily life. In fact, his loudest sound to date has been that he once happened to crunch a caraway seed in a bit of spiced Gruyére cheese between his teeth! From the beginning he is unable to understand the loud noises coming from below, and his amazement starts by thinking: I'm sure the papers said nothing about an invasion - only to imagine even worse possible scenarios along the way!

Both secondary characters are masterfully portrayed by Barks despite the minimal knowledge we are handed. He could easily have given them spirited or humourous names as we are used to in other stories, but instead Barks refrained thus adding to their slight mysticism. It is also interesting that both tenants are basically miles away from any violent behaviour but they change their personalities during the story! Barks also abstained from letting them speak (apart from a few short outbursts), thus strengthening our faith in two quiet gentlemen who would rather ponder than speak.