Mystery of the Ratty Couch Transport

When my brother and I were little, I'd guess around six and eight years old, he had a bunk bed in his room. His room also had two large windows that looked out across our driveway with an excellent view of our next door neighbor's back yard. Every so often we'd convince mom to let me camp out in his room. Then we'd sneak in some papers and pencils, and each lay on our respective bunks next to the window and watch across the driveway to the yard. The yard consisted of gravel and a generic assortment of grasses and weeds and wasn't very interesting in and of itself. The neighbors, however, were interesting - at least to a couple little kids who can't imagine being outside past ten o'clock at night. There were always people stopping by just for a few minutes, then leaving quickly. Occasionally someone would go in, never to be seen again (or not to leave until after we'd fallen asleep on our pages).   The mysterious guests would always pull right up to the back step, and we'd write down their licence plate numbers and the time and other details, like "wearing plaid shirt" and so forth. Once, they even moved a ratty old sofa onto a decrepit trailer. Imagine our disappointment that there were no license plates to be seen - they backed the trailer in at an angle. The thing is, I don't remember what started all this, and what we did with the note pages. I'm just glad I didn't wake up with a pencil in my nose, falling asleep writing like that. Decades later, I still remember wondering WHAT was the point of moving the couch so late at night? For all our sleuthing, we never discovered the Mystery of the Ratty Couch Transport.