Nutty Neighbors

[Viola]

Good Lord! What are Jewish holiday decorations? And what moron is offended by any one celebrating their religion? Sounds like you've got a real loser there.

I think the original problem had been for Sukkot (which is kind of Jewish Thanksgiving) where we put up an eight-day little club-house decorated with popcorn strings and "harvest festival" kind of stuff with the art projects of my little siblings and general Autumn Theme kinda stuff. Or it might have been Chanukah, I really don't know because they said it to my mom and not me, but we never did anything real elaborate for Chanukah.

Their holiday lights and giant plastic Santa Claus were apparently in much better taste. I think they were just cranks.

Being twelve, when I heard about that, I really wanted to do something with a boombox blaring Hava Nagila and blue-and-white halogen spotlights but my folks said that was not taking the high road. [huh]

Sukkot is pretty popular where we live now, you see a lot of designs and decorations in September-ish and I've never heard of anyone having a problem.

-Viola

 

[BonnieJean]

From all the posts here, I know I'm not alone with strange neighbors. I used to think it was because I lived in a very small town in the Midwest. We only have about 150 people here, counting cats and dogs, and so everyone is my "neighbor". A couple of years ago the townspeople ran off a bunch of meth cookers/dealers. It was the first time the townspeople banded together. Some of the guys even "paroled" the streets at night to keep watch over the town. Eventually the bad guys left because we were too annoying. (I think there is remmant left in town, though. )

I've lived here almost 22 years and I think I've adapted quite well with some of the weirdos. A few years ago in the summer, I heard an awful engine-like noise just before I was heading for bed. Unbeknownst to my husband, I ran outside just in time to see a person driving around on the grass in a snowmobile in the little park across the street. I grabbed a big stick on the ground and started chasing the idiot down the street. I think he was spooked by a lady running after him with a stick so much so that he gunned it through the pea gravel and spun out but soon disappeared into the other side of the town. My husband asked me later what I would of done if I had caught up with him. I told him I didn't know, but I was really mad at the racket he was making that late at night. I never knew for sure who was on that snowmobile, but I'm know I was the talk of some people in town. That was the last we saw of snowmobiles in the summer.

I've also been known to stand in my yard by the street, again with a stick in my hand, when kids are driving too fast on the street. I just wave the stick and yell, like that is going to stop car.

So, Roger, if I had chopped off a branch from your tree into my yard, I would keep it because they make nice weapons for me! lol

 

[Curt Chiarelli]

First of all, I really empathize with all of you and your tales of woe.

As for myself I seem to have the worst luck with neighbours. Everything from a family who sicced their pit bull on me for their own personal amusement, to drug dealers, to a moron who habitually blasted AC/DC and Metallica at 3:00 AM during the work week, to a frat boy who urinated off the upstairs balcony and flicked his cigarette butts onto mine, to an alcoholic nymphomaniac who became obsessed with me.

My dream solution? Make a mint and buy a private island from some Third World Southwest Pacific tinpot dictator so that I will never ever have neighbours again!

 

[Roger]

Too bad there isn't a residential development where all these nuts can live in their small messed up world.

 

[Cousin Hepcat]

Too bad there isn't a residential development where all these nuts can live in their small messed up world.

lol or one where we could live in our own vintage-styled one...

 

[PrettySquareGal]

lol or one where we could live in our own vintage-styled one...

But now you're getting into the "association" thing. All I can think of is The Stepford Wives!

 

[Fletch]

Too bad there isn't a residential development where all these nuts can live in their small messed up world.

How long would THAT dystopian community last? :whistling

I've been in an "aging building" 17 years. It's co-op managed and had rather zealously interpreted house rules. I used to get regular complaints about my saxophone and clarinet playing - most dutifully relayed by our security staff, who had grown old with the residents and took care to keep them anonymous - that it became damn near impossible to meet their demands and still practice at all.

The last straw came when I was sent a letter from an attorney, whose claims on behalf of my downstairs co-resident (undeserving of the word neighbor) were downright outlandish: playing instruments I neither owned nor knew how to play, keeping same up till 2:00am or even later, you get the idea. I pocketed that letter and took my case to the Board.

Luckily, serious action was averted when Mrs. Upstairs' family stepped in and apologized for their mama's behavior. She'd apparently been making more, and more irresponsible, complaints year by year for some time. They very shortly had her moved to long-term care, and peace and music resumed.

My current neighbor, a lovely and very independent woman past 90, used to tell me how much she loved my music, because it was her music too. Sadly, she no longer can. As is the way of things in old-old age, a broken bone led to a long hospitalization led to an eventual stroke. Now she is a shell, under full-time home care, never seen outside.

I still play of course. I hope she hears, somehow.

 

[Roger]

But at least all the dysfunctional crazies can be medicated or something.

 

[Curt Chiarelli]

Too bad there isn't a residential development where all these nuts can live in their small messed up world.

Yeah . . . . then we could call in the airstrike!

 

[Mike in Seattle]

My current neighbor, a lovely and very independent woman past 90, used to tell me how much she loved my music, because it was her music too. Sadly, she no longer can. As is the way of things in old-old age, a broken bone led to a long hospitalization led to an eventual stroke. Now she is a shell, under full-time home care, never seen outside.

I still play of course. I hope she hears, somehow.

Good for you! I'm betting, in some way, she does. I cared for my invalid mom the last dozen years of her life here at home following a stroke that left her paralyzed on the left side. During the final month she was hospitalized, the last couple days unconscious, but I did get a little few-second acknowledgement of messages getting through just before I left the night before she died.

So keep on playing!

 

[Fletch]

Of course, if any of the patrons tipped off the dealer, you and surrounding neighbors would be one of prime targets for retaliation.

I'm from around KD's part of the world (Ames originally). Des Moines has had a quiet but persistent crime problem for decades and very little success in controlling it. In the 1970s and '80s, a good number of our friends there had been robbed, one beaten so badly she almost didn't recover. Too bad, as it's a pretty decent place to live - if you're lucky.

 

[Sweet Leilani]

Well, I'm living in this corporate owned home here in California for a while. One neighbor is a real jerk. A couple branches from a tree grew over the fence and was 10 feet above the ground. So he cut it back to the fence, fine with me, but instead of disposing of the branches himself the moron threw them over into my yard. I came home from work, saw what he did and threw them right back over the fence. "Al" comes out in his too small sweats and tells me that he didn't want it growing into his yard and since it was my tree I should get rid of it. So I told him that "you cut it, you dispose of it. If you do that again it will be you who will be thrown over the fence". Was I being too diplomatic?

Funny, something similar happened to us right after we moved in about four years ago. We share a hedgerow across the back of our property with a guy who is kind of obsessive about his property rights, apparently. One day, I came home from work to find that all the small bushes along the line (and some that were definitely from our side) had been cut down and deposited in our yard. He also "trimmed" the trees on his side, removing all the branches that reached over onto our property at the trunk. We had a lovely view of the back of his garage and some of the work vans he has rotting away there for a couple years.

We couldn't figure out what he was trying to prove until one of our other neighbors told us that he hated the previous occupant of our house (they shot each other's dogs ) and I guess he assumed that my husband was the former owner's son living here.

All our other neighbors are great, with one exception- we have a real brainiac living around the corner. He likes to burn his grass and brush, and one day had a pretty good blaze going. He had the back of his pickup filled with sticks and backed it up to dump them in the fire. I guess he wanted to just push them off the bed, because he kept getting closer & closer and finally parked right on top of the fire. When he got out to dump the sticks & realized how close the truck's gas tank was to blowing up, you never saw a guy get out of there quicker! lol

 

[Fletch]

Isn't that always the way with these neo-feudalist numnuts - they'll make a big to do over the property line but routinely leave some eyesore on their land, and don't you dare complain about it. And the next thing you know a dog is dead.

 

[Fletch]

Hey now. Lizzie lives in a small town and if she hangs out huge ratty granny underwear, people are going to assume that a) she's taking in washing to make ends meet or b) it's hers. Either way, things get around, y'know?

 

[Roger]

An update on the insane

Isn't that always the way with these neo-feudalist numnuts - they'll make a big to do over the property line but routinely leave some eyesore on their land, and don't you dare complain about it. And the next thing you know a dog is dead.

Neo-feudalist numnuts????lol That about explains this loser next to me. You must have lived around here because he does have many eyesores in his yard. If you think Fred Sanford's yard in Sanford and Son was a mess you should see this crackpot.

Well, anyway, to give you all an update on Loserman he was at it again. But this time he was cutting the branches on the tree in front of his house, the tree is in his other neighbor's yard. And this time he disposed of the litter himself. Sometimes a little profanity laced diplomacy wakes this mules up.

 

[Pilgrim]

My neighbor built a six foot high wooden privacy fence along the property line - about 2 feet on my side. It was undiscovered until I had my lot surveyed.
So I used his fence as one wall when I fenced the rest of the yard.

This may seem like a major offense, but I'm grateful for the fence when he and his formidable bare belly are outdoors in the summer.

scotrace, you're unusually accommodating. When I lived in Texas, I once had a problem with water flowing through the bottom of a fence in a low-lying area between our back yard and one neighbor. I decided to move every other upright to the opposite side of the 2x4 horizontal member until my neightor came out and politely but firmly informed me that he didn't want "his fence" altered.

I checked the markers and he was right - by about 3 inches. it was an obvious error on the part of a previous owner of my property. But right is right, and I put the uprights back the way they were.

I'm not fond of privacy fences in any case. Frankly, if someone built one 2 ft. on my property I'd give him 30 days to remove it or I'd remove it myself and (if I thought I could do so) have the debris carted off at his expense. I don't usually take such hard stances, but 2 feet onto someone's property is a pretty bad error.

 

[Pilgrim]

A year or so back my next-door-neighbor didn't just cut down the tree limbs that spread over into his yard, he cut *all the trees* along the property line, right down to ground level, even the ones that were on my side of the line. Turned out his wife had given him a chain saw for his birthday, and he just wanted to be sure it worked right. Now I get to see his kids bouncing on their trampoline all day and they get a lovely view of my washing hanging on the clothesline. I miss the trees!

Lizzie, I don't know about you, but if I were 100% sure that trees on my side had been taken down, my next conversation with him would be a demand to re-plant trees, and not 6-inch seedlings. I'm talking about at least 10-gallon, 8-foot trees. The conversation after that (if necessary) would be with a lawyer.

And compared to the way many people feel about cutting down trees, my reaction is probably pretty mild.

That kind of mindless destruction really ticks me off!

I'm actually a pleasant neighbor, but I have learned that if I don't exercise case and control over my property lines, others will violate them and the problem will grow progressively worse. It's just not something that one can overlook.

 

[Grace]

In our last apartment before we bought our house, the guy who lived downstairs happened to be the son of the owner-a well to do lawyer.

The son, who was the live in maintenance man, was a strange old hippie type who smoked mass amounts of pot. I swear, our apartment constantly reeked of pot.

Once we went without a shower for a week, and without a toilet for 3 days. (The building used to be a bank at the turn of the century-very cool!) If we had a problem, we'd tell him and he'd fix it-when he didn't forget. We were having issues with the shower, so he comes upstairs and tears the whole thing apart. Then he tells us he is running out to grab a part he needs to fix it. I think he forgot (a tragic side effect of the pot, no doubt). After a few days, I went downstairs to remind him, and there he is, standing in about 3 inches of water at the bottom of the stairs. High as a kite, he had taken a Sawzall to the ceiling (to fix the plumbing??) and accidentally cut a main water pipe. :eusa_doh:

We got a rebate on our rent that month, and moved out shortly after.

 

[carebear]

You definitely want to maintain your property lines.

Open adverse possession for a length of time can actually result in the line moving. It's fine to leave a fence up if you don't mind it, but make sure you send notification to the neighbor to document you've told them the fence is wrong and you maintain the right to insist on their removing it. Then record that bad boy with your title to the property for documentation for your next buyer, heck, you can record a copy with their title, so the next buyer of their land is notified as well.

It's never a big deal until it becomes a huge deal. At that point you want to have all the documentation you can find.



Jovan,

I'm sure you know this but watch out for mountain lions. If you've got deer and nearby pets, the cats won't be far behind and they don't threaten as easy as human losers.

 

[Dr Doran]

I'm actually a pleasant neighbor, but I have learned that if I don't exercise case and control over my property lines, others will violate them and the problem will grow progressively worse. It's just not something that one can overlook.

Well said. You let one thing slip and before you know it ...