Property Rights
Riding my non-electric bike around the Head today, I came across a small pile of firewood stacked on the side of the highway that read: FREE — TAKE ALL OR NONE. I have a friend who could use a little extra BTU’s for the coming winter, her own pile being a bit shy of warming her past Christmas, so I thought I’d drive my truck back when I got home, pick up half a cord and make a surprise delivery.
I arrived with my pickup and backed along the shoulder next to the pile, but before I was barely out of the cab a woman appeared out of her blacktop driveway riding a gas powered mini-tractor. ‘That’s on my property,’ she announced, which, since the sign said FREE, momentarily confused me. ‘Is it yours?’ I asked and she told me no, it was the neighbors’ but they’d piled it on her property instead of their own, apparently a territorial intrusion that perturbed her greatly. I said I would remove the offending wood post-haste, figuring this would alleviate her boundary dispute, but then she said I should move my truck to their side of the woodpile, more a demand than a suggestion, and although I considered explaining that the shoulder was actually neither hers nor her offending neighbor, it was county right-of-way, I decided to move the truck. Then … I don’t know, call it contrariness. Or maybe the imperial way she was acting, but … I decided why should I move the truck when I would be gone in five minutes, no harm done.
So I asked her highness, ‘What’s the problem if I just simply load the wood right here and be on my way? To which she responded that the shoulder was more level on the other side. This side was just as level, seemed to me without calling in a surveyor, so I decided to ask again, ‘What’s the issue here?’ The lady started to answer, harrumphed heavily, then threw up her hands and started up her go-cart to leave.
A better man might have let it go at this. A better man might have moved the truck to the other side. But that man, alas, is not me. I said, ‘Hold up!’ And remarkably she did. ‘I just want to know why it’s a big deal to you to make this some kind of confrontation.’ This flustered her and she seemed on the verge of forming an answer, if there was one, but finally gave a disgusted wave and motored down her asphalt drive toward her million and a half dollar manse, no doubt muttering to herself about low life, cruddy losers who have the temerity to park anywhere near her moatless mansion in some beat up truck wearing a beat up hat and addressing her with insolence On or Next To or Too Nearby her estate.
There was a time, long before m’lady or m’lord bought their palace, when the South End was a tad more neighborly, when we helped each other build additions or fixed plumbing or troubleshot car problems. We knew each other’s name and yeah, sometimes we didn’t get along. I guess we were all serfs back then, but happy serfs. Now we got the dukes and duchesses to show us our proper place where even the shoulder of the road is off limits. It won’t be long before they’ll toll us for the use of their highway too.
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Tags: Boundary Disputes, Good Fences Make Good Neighbors, Manifest Destiny of the Rich