Down the road about half a mile or so, one of our neighbors has let his home fall into ruin. He no longer lives there as the house has become uninhabitable. The windows are broken, and the porch is falling off. The yard is strewn with junk. He has 113 acres on which he has parked over 30 junk cars. (He is our rural postman, and he buys old cars and abandons them when they wear out.) The place is, to put it mildly, an eyesore, a blight on an otherwise lovely hollow.
To top it off, he keeps goats, and his even crazier next door neighbor releases them from time to time. It is not unusual for the goats to be loitering in the road, and you have to get out of your vehicle and shoo them away before you can drive through. Every year, the goats have kids, and these are about the cutest critters you can imagine.
Yet our neighbor, who is clearly more than a little mad, is an amiable fellow, and our mail is faithfully delivered. Nobody has seen fit to complain about his property. We just roll our eyes and chuckle. A visitor asked me why someone didn’t rat him out for keeping an unlicensed junkyard or creating an environmental hazard or something. I reckon that the denizens of this hollow feel that it would take a first rate a**hole to do something like that. We would rather have a crazy car abandoner than a meddlesome jackass for a neighbor. Also, we want to keep getting our mail. And the goats are fun. They add character to the neighborhood.
From time to time, neighbors have meddled with one another by trying to put the kibosh on development plans or requests for variances. These neighbors get talked about unfavorably and have mainly moved away. For the most part, we feel that you should be able to do just about anything you like on your property as long as you don’t disturb others. We don’t always like it, as when the family across the road engages in constant early morning excavation every summer weekend, but we grin and bear it.
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2 comments:
Although a residential neighborhood in the suburbs, I live in a similar situation. We're in the county about 5 blocks from the city limit line. No curbs, gutters or city vehicles. Subdivided in the 'teens and built out mostly in the 30's to early 50's, with sprinkled "custom" houses from recent decades and a few vacant lots yet. Sanford & Son live on the next block. It's a junkyard with easily 15 cars on a 6k sq. ft. lot. The house hasn't had tlc in a few decades, and the front porch tilts about 8" to the left. The comedy lies in the family name sign hanging from the porch soffit... "Tilton."
We've been here almost a year and a half and looked at the house next door two weeks before we bought ours. It is a mirror image of ours with previous additions. Our move-in week saw their garage catch fire with all their yet unpacked belongings ruined and I played the super hero "garden hose man" until the red engines showed up.
During their rebuild, they discovered that some skeletons from the past built into what are now the setbacks (our garages are a mere 7 feet apart and I discovered how hot fire is and just how weak my hose is), requiring a variance. Of course they expanded the kitchen out to the garage wall and built the garage closer to the street, taking up a bit of our view, but well worth knowing they could accomplish what they wanted. We received a letter asking for comments, but a previous engagement prevented me from becoming head cheerleader. Their plan gave us ideas, but we also discovered that because of the previously existing condition, anything at all we do will require a variance. There's an uneasy feeling knowing that just one king james donkey can spoil our future plans, but checks and balances of the masses could cut that down.
The moral of the story... Love thy neighbor as thyself.
Steve-
There are few things worse than disagreeable neighbors, and I will go to great lengths to preserve neighborly relations. Our two across the street neighbors were feuding a little over their dogs (they don't get along so well), and I advised that they build a fence. Problem solved; feud ended; peace restored.
Occasional neighborhood gatherings do a lot to keep good relations, since nobody wants to have to face a neighbor they screwed over at the next barbecue or to be talked about if they don't attend.
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