I have lived next door to an elderly couple in an older working-class neighborhood for sixteen years. For the first four or five years they were friendly enough and I sort of liked the idea of them "watching out" for my house while I was away, but they were always a bit too adept at appearing unexpectedly in my fenced backyard and elsewhere around my house uninvited, and their conversations were invariably monologues on how "well" they and their numerous progeny had done in life.
One day as I pulled into the driveway,I was amazed to see the old man, who stood oblivious to my arrival, peering into my front window with a group of semi-attended children who also live in the 'hood. When they became aware of my presence, they all started examining leaves and twigs in my yard and they affected the air of being on some sort of "field trip". Perplexed and a little miffed, I stood in the yard trying to grin at them just a little too hard (so my disapproval would be obvious - well, in retrospect - obvious to any adult with some slight clue) and as the old man explained that "the children were looking at the leaves from my tree" I laughed sharply, shook my head and walked away.
For years, this old couple have had yardwork done for them in which the trimmings end up in my yard; he burns paper,cardboard,etc. in a stove in a small outbuilding on their property but the smoke ends up making my upstairs smell like there is an elecrical fire somewhere entirely TOO nearby; he wanders around in the alley, talking to anyone who will pay attention and accumulating stickers(seedpods) in his shoes and then proceeds to his "garden"; a tiny strip 8'X 3' where he grows tomatoes and sows weeds from the stowaways on his shoes ON MY PROERTY exactly adjacent to his "garden"; if he finds any blowing papers, bottles, branches etc., etc., AND etc. in his yard he unjustly and irrationally assumes it has come from me somehow and waits for me to leave and then places the object in my driveway, so I have to park, get out and remove the obstacle. I have never actually caught him at this but let us say I have rather strong suspicions based on his other behaviour.
The date 9/11/01 will stick in my memory not only for the OBVIOUS reasons but also because, as I sat on my back porch not a little dazed, pondering the beastly depths of depravity to which mankind was capable of falling and the ramifications of the terrorist attack on the WTC and Pentagon, I was pulled from this sad revery by the old woman, who wondered insistently if I would "trim my roses, some sprigs were overlapping their wall" and causing them obviously some greater consternation than all the horrific events of that day combined. I put padlocks on my gates to keep them out of my backyard, but the old man apparently convinced himself that I and my eight year old(at the time)son had recruited the neighborhood cats to relieve themselves on his property. He gruffly ordered my son to "get "his"(my son's) damn cat out of "his"(old man's) yard", my son, trying to be polite, complied by trying to capture the animal while truthfully explaining that we don't even keep cats. If I had known about this incident there would have been a confrontation at that time. To "get back" at us for the "cat affront", he began taking another neighbor's small dog from it's yard and physically placing it into our padlocked backyard where it would relive itself and escape between the fencepost and the gate. Having actually observed this, I ran downstairs and confronted him where he now sat in his backyard and incredibly, he DENIED the whole thing(!). He takes this other neighbor's same small dog on walks up and down the street without a leash; since the dog has established its scent in my yard, the animal just contents itself befouling my yard while this fine old fellow "innocently" wanders the street. I have told him in no uncertain terms to keep the animal out of my yard and when this went unheeded, called Animal Control, who said they would call both the old couple and the dog's owners(who, being younger and having lived in the neighborhood only about a year, are disinclined to think this old couple are capable of such mischief, much less outright disingenuousness) and let them know that they were all liable to be fined for the dog which was becoming a nuisance by proxy. Now, not only am I the bad guy with at least two neighbors, but he walks the dog, now on a leash, and stands gawking at whatever he thinks he perceives in the bushes or the equally extraordinary(to him) cracks in the sidewalk in front of my house while the dog pees on the grass at the end of his leash. I am happy that I can park my car in the garage or I would have to install video cameras to protect it from this elderly pair of delinquents.
I am aware that I might speak to his adult children but I am only very slightly acquainted with them and have a distinct impression that they, for whatever reason(s), are disinclined to much interference in their parent's golden years.... I am also aware that I am quite limited to what recourse I have under the law, that there are indeed laws which prevent me from addressing the problem with the directness the situation probably requires and I dont want to make it my life's purpose to document these transgressions with videotape and retain an attorney for whatever civil suit I could come up with. Moving is also out of the question at present.
I content myself with the reflection that the passage of time will most likely sooner, rather than later, let me have the last laugh. I only hope that I can absorb some wisdom from this series of admittedly minor aggravations(for the most part)and that my approaching late afternoon/twilight years will NOT find me becoming a problem and an embarassment.
