Monday Meanderings - 1.28.2018

Car Wars

For the most part, our neighborhood is quiet and peaceful. There's the occasional Next Door report of lost or found pets,  and there's the Friday night garage band rehearsal from somewhere down the block, but by-and-large, nothing much out of the ordinary happens around here. Until recently.

It is not uncommon to see news items about neighbor's spats escalating to unfortunate - even deadly - levels, but you generally don't expect to see those play out on your block. However, we are watching just such an escalation, and it's just across the street.

The neighbor of interest - we'll call him FT - has an old junker pickup parked on the street just below his driveway that sits partially on FT's side of the lot line and extends onto his neighbor CB's side of the line.

CB asked FT to move his pickup, as it makes trimming the adjacent grass difficult. FT responded by saying that the pickup is inoperable and actually belongs to a family member who has not been able to haul it off.

CB's response was to begin parking his car in front of FT's house. This seems rather spiteful to us, and inconvenient, since CB has to carefully avoid parking in front of FT's sidewalk - which is a City code violation - but at the same time avoid encroaching on the property of the up-street neighbor, MM. Then CB has to walk down the block to his house.

FT escalated the situation by putting his garbage and recycling bins in CB's designated landing zone. CB has simply moved them aside. FT-0, CB-1.

Next, FT put a large tree limb in the way. CB manhandled it onto FT's lawn. FT-0, CB-2.

FT got a friend to come and park his pickup in the contested space for a time. FT-1, CB-2.

The friend eventually had to take his vehicle home, and since then it has been a steady succession of CB parking his car in front of FT's house - 3:30pm to 5:00am and on weekends.

Were it not for the fact that CB's car ends up parked directly across from our driveway, and we must remember it's there so as not to back into it - something we did to FT's car the 1st week we lived here - it would be laughable.

That and the fact that these neighbor spats often end up on the nightly news.

I'll keep you posted.