Some few of y’all may recall the saga of our “bad neighbors”–multiple calls to the police/sheriff’s department for rowdyism, driving over our lawn with their trucks, dogs running loose, late night-early morning loud, drunken parties on their front lawn, racing down the street, etc.
They’re finally gone. A new couple has moved in. Don’t really know him past “Howdy” but she’s a teller at the local bank and has been for about eight years. Stable, nice folks. Greeted me by name when I took a couple of small baskets of cherry tomatoes over to see who’d moved in (even if they’d not liked tomatoes–they do–it was a good excuse to drop by, ya know?). They moved in while I was having a busy schedule over the past week out and about, so I didn’t get to carry any furniture, as some of our neighbors did when we moved in 15 years ago. Bummer. So a few cherry tomatoes were the least I could drop by, eh? Yeh, yeh, I shoulda baked bread or muffins or something, but when I took a cherry pie to the gals at the bank (yes, even the manager’s a woman) I didn’t bake it myself. Baking’s not my gig.
*whew!* Hail and farewell.
Congratulations.
I don’t have as much trouble as you do, but two of the worst neighbors in my entire subdivision sit directly on either side of my property.
No effort at upkeep whatsoever, no common sense, no effort at cleaning snow from the drivewyas and sidewalks, and no friendliness in all these years.
Oh well. I know damn well they are all Obama voters, so getting to know them would only mean disliking them more I supose.
A neat rule of thumb is to be the kind of neighbor you’d like living next to. I had a trailer trash neighbor living next to us in our first house. When they had major damage from a car running through the front of their house they covered it with plywood and spent the insurance money on wild parties. That was my clue to find another place to live. Several years later I drove by the place and the plywood had rotted and was still covering the hole in the corner of their house were the car had been. Nice folks, if you like trailer trash.
While it’s true one doesn’t always get to pick ones neighbors, it’s also true, as you point out, TF, that one can always choose to try to be neighborly. Sometimes that works out. Sometimes–as in Woody’s case and the case of our erstwhile NON-neighbors, yahoos move in and one starts to consider moving out to escape the trailer park trash who’ve moved in–as TF points out.
BTW, there’s a difference between trailer park trash and most of the folks who live in trailer–or mobile home–parks. I’ve had friends who started out in mobile homes, sometimes in the strange “neighborhoods” mobile home parks can be, who are perfectly good, upright folks anyone would want for neighbors. I can also recall a couple my folks’ ages who downsized their lives to a mobile home situated in a mobile home park when they retired. Salt of the earth, good people.
Trailer park trash aren’t even welcome in most trailer parks and are considered trash in even the most “slummy” of trailer parks.
When folks with that mentality move into an otherwise decent neighborhood, one always has to wonder (or hope? *heh*) when their house–for various reasons–will blow up… (does that place smell like a meth lab to you too?)