(A disclaimer: Apologies if this post reads like it was written by that drunk guy from Breitbart. My writing muscles have atrophied in my extended absence from this place, but at least I'll keep off the shift-1 key.)
I'm not neighborly.
I'm an intensely private person (he said somewhat hypocritically, in spite of the fact that he keeps a blog and has a Twitter account to which he posts regularly). Still, I keep to myself. I will leave you alone, and I expect the same respect. Doesn't mean I don't like you, doesn't mean that I won't share beers or whatever with you from time to (extremely rare) time. I'm just not a social creature. I'm not going to show up on your doorstep just to hang out. Don't take offense; that just ain't me.
Long story short: respect the boundaries. In turn, you can rest assured that you won't see a description of you in this space. Cross the line, though, and you will be eviscerated. And before you get all wound up, crying about how "that mean man on that internet blog threatened to disembowel me," note that this is not a threat you need to take to the police. I believe in the magic of a kind word, and I believe in the power of the written word to cut deep. No more, no less. Put down the gun.
I tell you that to tell you this rather long-winded story.
I, unfortunately, live in a neighborhood. Most of us keep to ourselves. I've lived here for almost 9 years, and I still occasionally want to call my immediate next-door neighbor Tom, even though I'm between 10 and 20 percent certain that's not his name. I'm actually leaning toward Larry, now that I think about it, but again, I'm really not too sure.
TomLarry and I occasionally wave to each other when we're both mowing. He keeps his lawn immaculate. (As I am fond of saying, he has a lawn. I have a yard. Those of you clever enough to appreciate the subtle difference between the two know what I mean.) We spoke once, several months after I moved in. We get along perfectly.
This piece is not about him.
Conversely, I've written about other neighbors in the past in this space, using the pejorative "dumbass" to describe them. For a couple of years, I've considered redacting that term, cause it didn't seem like they were that bad, ill treatment of dogs notwithstanding. There was a time, though, when the father or the son would "drop by" on occasion, and how I hate drop-bys. Yeah, OK, the father did help me get my mower out of the muck when it got hung up a couple of years ago, and yeah, sure, the son did get on his mower and mow the back 3 acres of the palatial BT Estates on several occasions last year and this when mine was out of commission, and yeah, they did drag that dead cedar tree away. All that "good neighbor" crap that, really, I detest.
As thanks (especially for the mowing part), I gave them my old pull-behind mower so that they could mow around their pond, theirs to keep, ERV $300 at least. And I let them use the backyard for landing and launching their RC airplanes. There's plenty of room, more than they have especially since they dug out a pond in the middle of their property.
I think we're more than even.
A couple of months ago, in the July timeframe, Wife bought a cattle panel. Although we own no cattle to speak of, it doubles as a poor man's grape arbor, which was the intent of the purchase. She got it home, and it sat out in the yard for a months. I mowed around it a couple of times before managing to run over one of its corners, damaging it and fearing her wrath in the process. She talked about getting that cattle panel for about a year, and here the corner is fucked up on it.
Son of a bitch!!!
So I dragged it over to the orchard, where I mow once a year or so. Having already mowed there once this year to my satisfaction, I laid it down, where it stayed for about another month or so.
Tonight, it finally happened! She decided that tonight was gonna be the night that the arbor would be put up, so we walked across the driveway to where the grapevine laid on the ground. Once there, she asked where the cattle panel was.
Well, it's about 10 feet away under that peach tree, I said. I'll just go over there and drag it out. "Hello, cows," I said to the calves that were in a pen across the property line. They refused to speak, which isn't very neighborly.
Hmmmm.
It's not here.
I kicked around the ground a little bit, thinking that weeds had overtaken the cattle panel and hoping to kick up some metal to grab onto to drag it back out.
It's not here.
Walked around the orchard a little bit - maybe it got dragged a few feet in one direction or the other?
It's not here.
I eyed the calves penned up on the other side of the property line. It occurred to me at that point: "That's new," I thought to myself.
You don't think .... surely not.
I went up to the property line - respecting property rights and all that is one of my tenets - and peered at the panel facing my property, looking for any damage that would be an identifier. Nothing. I looked around, saw no one watching, crossed over and examined the second panel. Nothing. I turned the corner to the third, looking up and down for a broken corner. Nothing ---
There it is.
"Found it," I said to Wife.
"No, I'm not kidding."
There it was, busted corner and all, laying on the ground behind the shed that served as the fourth wall of the pen for the calves, which meant that it was out of sight to me standing where I was standing on my property. Which meant that it was not accidental, how it ended up over there.
At that point, I did not care if anyone was watching. I dragged it back over to the grapevines, and we put it in the ground. Looks like this. (FWIW, she wants it to look like this someday.)
And as we were hammering the rebar into the ground, I would occasionally stare back at the neighbor's house with a look that Wife described as the most evil she's ever seen me.
(Because, really, who would miss a 12-foot-long, $40 piece of metal fencing that you had just laying in your yard? Cause, hell, it's apparent that you weren't doing anything with it.)
So they just came over and took it. They perhaps saw me moving it one night while mowing. They saw me lay it down underneath the fruit trees several feet off the property line. They came over at some point between then and now, picked it up and FUCKING TOOK IT.
Fucking thieves. Fucking thieves!!!
So I took it back.
Here's the thing. It isn't just the stealing that gets me, though I am more than irked by that point of fact. It's the fact that they forced me to be neighborly. They came over, without asking, and mowed the backyard several times last year. (LEAVE ME ALONE. Don't make me owe you. Cause I've got too much pride to ask for anyone to do anything for me, and I don't want to be in any real or imagined debt to ANYONE.) They dragged that cedar tree away without asking (even with an ulterior motive - to put it in their pond so that it'll act as a reef-like thing or something - fuck, I don't know, I'm not a marine biologist).
So that gives you the fucking right to walk over onto MY property and just help yourself.
Really.
And off the point entirely, but just out of curiosity, are YOU the reason I had to move the deep freeze out of the garage and into the house a couple years ago? Cause I had blamed the missing meat from it on an entirely different family of assholes living out by the highway.
I do suggest that going forward, y'all just keep to yourselves, just as I do and will continue to do. Because of your blatant "they won't miss it" thievery, I have zero use for you anymore, and time may come when I respectfully request that you restore the fence dividing our two properties. Good fences and all that.
Fuckers.
I'm not neighborly.
I'm an intensely private person (he said somewhat hypocritically, in spite of the fact that he keeps a blog and has a Twitter account to which he posts regularly). Still, I keep to myself. I will leave you alone, and I expect the same respect. Doesn't mean I don't like you, doesn't mean that I won't share beers or whatever with you from time to (extremely rare) time. I'm just not a social creature. I'm not going to show up on your doorstep just to hang out. Don't take offense; that just ain't me.
Long story short: respect the boundaries. In turn, you can rest assured that you won't see a description of you in this space. Cross the line, though, and you will be eviscerated. And before you get all wound up, crying about how "that mean man on that internet blog threatened to disembowel me," note that this is not a threat you need to take to the police. I believe in the magic of a kind word, and I believe in the power of the written word to cut deep. No more, no less. Put down the gun.
I tell you that to tell you this rather long-winded story.
I, unfortunately, live in a neighborhood. Most of us keep to ourselves. I've lived here for almost 9 years, and I still occasionally want to call my immediate next-door neighbor Tom, even though I'm between 10 and 20 percent certain that's not his name. I'm actually leaning toward Larry, now that I think about it, but again, I'm really not too sure.
TomLarry and I occasionally wave to each other when we're both mowing. He keeps his lawn immaculate. (As I am fond of saying, he has a lawn. I have a yard. Those of you clever enough to appreciate the subtle difference between the two know what I mean.) We spoke once, several months after I moved in. We get along perfectly.
This piece is not about him.
Conversely, I've written about other neighbors in the past in this space, using the pejorative "dumbass" to describe them. For a couple of years, I've considered redacting that term, cause it didn't seem like they were that bad, ill treatment of dogs notwithstanding. There was a time, though, when the father or the son would "drop by" on occasion, and how I hate drop-bys. Yeah, OK, the father did help me get my mower out of the muck when it got hung up a couple of years ago, and yeah, sure, the son did get on his mower and mow the back 3 acres of the palatial BT Estates on several occasions last year and this when mine was out of commission, and yeah, they did drag that dead cedar tree away. All that "good neighbor" crap that, really, I detest.
As thanks (especially for the mowing part), I gave them my old pull-behind mower so that they could mow around their pond, theirs to keep, ERV $300 at least. And I let them use the backyard for landing and launching their RC airplanes. There's plenty of room, more than they have especially since they dug out a pond in the middle of their property.
I think we're more than even.
A couple of months ago, in the July timeframe, Wife bought a cattle panel. Although we own no cattle to speak of, it doubles as a poor man's grape arbor, which was the intent of the purchase. She got it home, and it sat out in the yard for a months. I mowed around it a couple of times before managing to run over one of its corners, damaging it and fearing her wrath in the process. She talked about getting that cattle panel for about a year, and here the corner is fucked up on it.
Son of a bitch!!!
So I dragged it over to the orchard, where I mow once a year or so. Having already mowed there once this year to my satisfaction, I laid it down, where it stayed for about another month or so.
Tonight, it finally happened! She decided that tonight was gonna be the night that the arbor would be put up, so we walked across the driveway to where the grapevine laid on the ground. Once there, she asked where the cattle panel was.
Well, it's about 10 feet away under that peach tree, I said. I'll just go over there and drag it out. "Hello, cows," I said to the calves that were in a pen across the property line. They refused to speak, which isn't very neighborly.
Hmmmm.
It's not here.
I kicked around the ground a little bit, thinking that weeds had overtaken the cattle panel and hoping to kick up some metal to grab onto to drag it back out.
It's not here.
Walked around the orchard a little bit - maybe it got dragged a few feet in one direction or the other?
It's not here.
I eyed the calves penned up on the other side of the property line. It occurred to me at that point: "That's new," I thought to myself.
You don't think .... surely not.
I went up to the property line - respecting property rights and all that is one of my tenets - and peered at the panel facing my property, looking for any damage that would be an identifier. Nothing. I looked around, saw no one watching, crossed over and examined the second panel. Nothing. I turned the corner to the third, looking up and down for a broken corner. Nothing ---
There it is.
"Found it," I said to Wife.
"No, I'm not kidding."
There it was, busted corner and all, laying on the ground behind the shed that served as the fourth wall of the pen for the calves, which meant that it was out of sight to me standing where I was standing on my property. Which meant that it was not accidental, how it ended up over there.
At that point, I did not care if anyone was watching. I dragged it back over to the grapevines, and we put it in the ground. Looks like this. (FWIW, she wants it to look like this someday.)
And as we were hammering the rebar into the ground, I would occasionally stare back at the neighbor's house with a look that Wife described as the most evil she's ever seen me.
(Because, really, who would miss a 12-foot-long, $40 piece of metal fencing that you had just laying in your yard? Cause, hell, it's apparent that you weren't doing anything with it.)
So they just came over and took it. They perhaps saw me moving it one night while mowing. They saw me lay it down underneath the fruit trees several feet off the property line. They came over at some point between then and now, picked it up and FUCKING TOOK IT.
Fucking thieves. Fucking thieves!!!
So I took it back.
Here's the thing. It isn't just the stealing that gets me, though I am more than irked by that point of fact. It's the fact that they forced me to be neighborly. They came over, without asking, and mowed the backyard several times last year. (LEAVE ME ALONE. Don't make me owe you. Cause I've got too much pride to ask for anyone to do anything for me, and I don't want to be in any real or imagined debt to ANYONE.) They dragged that cedar tree away without asking (even with an ulterior motive - to put it in their pond so that it'll act as a reef-like thing or something - fuck, I don't know, I'm not a marine biologist).
So that gives you the fucking right to walk over onto MY property and just help yourself.
Really.
And off the point entirely, but just out of curiosity, are YOU the reason I had to move the deep freeze out of the garage and into the house a couple years ago? Cause I had blamed the missing meat from it on an entirely different family of assholes living out by the highway.
I do suggest that going forward, y'all just keep to yourselves, just as I do and will continue to do. Because of your blatant "they won't miss it" thievery, I have zero use for you anymore, and time may come when I respectfully request that you restore the fence dividing our two properties. Good fences and all that.
Fuckers.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please note: My policy at Bramble Tamble is to not use real names for private citizens. I hope you will adhere to this policy; hell, it's my only rule here. (But you can use your own real name if you'd like. Cause I'm magnanimous like that.)