When I stepped into the shower on Saturday afternoon, I thought I heard a motor of some kind in our front yard. I presumed it might be The Veteran, returning one of Hick's tractors after using it to prepare for the installation of his swimming pool. The dogs were barking, but they know The Veteran, and it didn't last for long.
It was 4:15 when I left the house and started for town. Well. The dogs were not around. I had a small leaving snack for them as usual. I tossed it on the side porch. When T-Hoe and I arrived at the end of the driveway, I saw two kids on a 4-wheeler in the BARn field. They looked about 10 years old.
That's not something you want to see on your land. It's not about the disrespect of tearing up somebody's grass on private property. It's about the possible liability if they wreck and injure themselves. Why should our insurance pay for some irresponsible parents letting their spawn trespass?
Anyhoo... I stopped at the end of the driveway, because there was a black pickup truck in the middle of the gravel road. Somebody at our across-the-road neighbors' house was closing the metal gate to their driveway. It had a handwritten sign attached, but I couldn't read it. There was another woman opening the metal gate to their horse field. They haven't had horses for a couple years now. Apparently, they were parking vehicles in the horse field.
I don't know why the driver of the black pickup truck couldn't understand what to do. Obviously, the driveway gate was closed, and the field gate was open. No need to sit there blocking the gravel road. FINALLY that truck went into the horse field. Past the guy on the giant Harley motorcycle revving his loud engine.
The kids went across the gravel road as well. Good riddance to the underage trespassers! I noticed that our neighbors had a post with two red Solo cups hanging from it. Huh. They must have been marking a route to their house. Indeed, as I got to the bottom of Hick and Buddy's Badly Blacktopped Hill that had been pulverized into a pile of blacktop chunks, I saw another two red Solo cups dangling from a metal post. AND there were the red Solo cups at the end of our gravel road, by the mailboxes, and another out on the county blacktop road where it joins the county lettered highway.
When I returned home to find Hick in his recliner, I mentioned this activity.
"Do you hear that music booming?"
"Yeah. Neighbor is having a party for her 60th birthday. I don't want to go, because I don't like to be around drunks."
"If there's ever going to be ANOTHER headless body found in a septic tank, it would be the work of THIS CROWD!"
Hick agreed. We don't begrudge our neighbors this party. We get along with them, even though their dogs ate all our chickens. We don't want to start a feud. After all, they sent me FREE TACOS! Sometimes, you have to endure some unpleasantness to preserve cordial relations with the people who live nearest you.
I know all about liability!! It is okay with me if you want to let children too young go nuts with a fourwheeler, or such. Just not on my property! Red solo cups, huh? I suppose it was an inexpensive way to mark a trail.
ReplyDeleteI suppose one of those women regained her senses when she saw me sitting in T-Hoe, giving those kids the stinkeye, and told them to stay out of our field. It's possible they thought no one was home, until I dared leave my hillbilly mansion. Those kids don't live there, and it wasn't my neighbor directing traffic at the end of their driveway.
DeleteThe red solo cups were more visible than the posterboard signs that people out on the blacktop road put up when they have their yearly pig roast.
I know what you mean about civility. I'm studying up on my Spanish once again because of all our neighbors.
ReplyDeleteYep. You gotta choose your battles. This one-time party is not the hill I want to expire on.
DeleteRed Solo cups as a trail marker is a clever idea. The kids should know better, but the parents surely do. A sixty-year-old woman is having a loud party? Or, her guests are just raucous?
ReplyDeleteIt was an outside party. So the music was loud. I'm sure she was having a grand time on this landmark birthday. Her friends don't seem to understand boundaries.
DeleteMy very nice, prim and proper neighbors 50 and 60 something had a birthday party, outdoors right next to our house. Fine. But, they should have invited us to a party that lasted until 3 am! They were loud and raucous and had very loud music. But, we said nothing because it was the first we had heard anything over there for over four years. Then, they moved and I got the neighbors with barking dogs, abusing children, and trashy, weed-filled yard.
ReplyDeleteI guess neighbors are like a box of chocolates: you never know what you're going to get!
Delete"Sometimes you have to endure unpleasantness" that's true enough, but I am sick of the weekly unpleasantness of the neighbours fighting with yells loud enough to wake the dead and always after midnight. The solo cups to show the way are a good idea!
ReplyDeleteThe good outweighs the bad with these neighbors. I'm not sure that would apply to yours! The solo cups are still hanging! Maybe they should pick them up. Somebody might follow them, thinking there's a yard sale or something!
DeleteLet me just say, you may be the only one with common sense.
ReplyDeleteHeh, heh! I try to tell people that all the time!
Delete