Monday Rantings

AJ & I have done a very good job of being nice to and tolerant of our neighbors. We have some interesting ones, but we try to mind our own business in hopes that they'll do the same.

Until yesterday.

I mentioned before that we had two dump truck loads of dirt delivered. The moving process has been slow going, and we didn't need nearly as much as we were given, so we've been sharing with our friends and neighbors.

(It's important to note that our house and the house across the street, where the cougar lives, are set down about 2 feet from the road. Our yards slope towards our house, where everyone else on our street sits even with the road. You can see on the left side of the picture where the sun is shining on the grass is a drop of about a foot. Over by the stop sign is a drainage ditch.)

Yesterday, AJ spent the afternoon giving the cougar some dirt for her yard, which she used to level out the slope a little, where her yard drops towards her house. AJ did the same thing in our yard, in a small section. I'm talking like an inch or two of dirt - nothing drastic.

Around 7:00, we hear a tap-tap-tap on our deck, and Costa goes crazy. I was in my pjs, so I sent AJ to see who it was. It was our next door neighbor, one-armed-J, knocking on our deck with his robotic arm. This is how the conversation went between J & AJ.

J: I can't remember your name, son.

AJ: AJ.

J: Well, AJ, you got no business putting that dirt where you're putting it.

AJ: Excuse me?

J: The sewage runs east to west and you gonna have water in you' house. You ain't got no business doin' that.

AJ: No sir, the sewage runs north to south - as evidenced by the drainage ditch and pipe in our yard.

J: (At this point, quite angry) Well, I ain't gonna tell you again what to do. You need to put dirt from your house down to the street and quit doin' what you doin'. I'm going to call up the town and tell them.

AJ: That's fine. And while you're at it, tell them they need to fill in this ditch. Unless you have $5000 laying around that you'd like to do it.

J: You just ain't got no business. (And he walks away.)

I realize this all seems very petty and ridiculous. But if this guy is truly concerned about us, there are many different ways he could've gone about saying what he had to say without starting off the conversation with "You ain't got no business." It's our property and we're not messing with anyone.

This guy rides around in his golf cart, sporting a rebel flag the size of Texas, lets his dog out to bark before 7am, cleans his fish and rinses the guts into our yard where our dog eats them, and keeps a rotting canopy that covers his boat in our yard. And we've never once complained. In fact, this guy has always been relatively nice. Most of the time, when he talks to me, I just have to smile and nod, because I can't understand a word he's saying, but my sister got along great with him, and I try my best to be nice.

There's a point, though, where you have to draw the line. He didn't "have no business" walking onto our property, disrupting our dog, and telling us what to do.

What do you do with a neighbor like that? AJ & I would like to keep our lot and stay where we're at for a while. As bad as it sounds, he's got to be at least 70, so maybe he won't be in that house for much longer? On one hand, we could just ignore him and pretend like nothing happened and hope he minds his own business next time. Or, since I have the police # on speed dial, I could report a noise violation everytime his dog wakes us up in the early morning.

Which road do you choose? The high one or the gratifying one? Have you ever had difficult neighbors to deal with?