Three seasons out of the year, I don’t see my next-door neighbor Kim. Just traces of him—the trail of his cigarette, the sound of his Harley each morning at first light, and sometimes at night, the blue glow of his hot tub, which materializes out of the Wisconsin darkness like a ghostly window of sky. A quiet guy, he rarely appears at neighborhood gatherings—the winter solstice potluck, the Day of the Dead fête, the annual thirty-seventh birthday party of my neighbor Cherie, which inevitably turns into an all-night extravaganza of daiquiris and Sufi dancing and dogs dressed in little costumes. Kim is an auto mechanic, a stout, bearded man in his sixties who has lived in the same house since he was fifteen. Nine months out of twelve, he stores up his burly gusto for the one party he throws each year: his summer pig roast.

Kim is a summer lover. More than anyone in our neighborhood (affectionately referred to as “the massage ghetto,” for its surplus of body workers), he knows how to maximize his warm-weather pleasure. A few years back, he installed a beer tap next to his sliding screen door so he could pour a cold one from his deck without having to leave his lawn chair. Before that, he installed a platform for his television across from the Jacuzzi, so he could watch the Packers games while submerged. On Sundays, his bearded face and pint glass are barely visible above the blue foam.

In downtown Madison, where the yards are narrow and the trees are thin, Kim is the ultimate urban outdoorsman, and nothing—not his deck, not his canoe, not his mysterious spelunking gear in the garage—showcases his talent for masterminding a bona fide summer blowout like his pig roast. Three years running, it features a different porcine personality each time around with posters that precede the event, announcing the coming of “Willy the Pig” or “Harry the Hog” until a whole persona has evolved long before the poor thing arrives from pasture packed in ice.