Speak Softly and Build a Big Fence
You live on the wild wild South End, you know the Long Arm of the Law isn’t all THAT lengthy and the Reach of Rome isn’t either. Frontier Justice is what we got, more often than not, although I’m not saying I’m an advocate. Me, I’m like most of us down here at the end of the county road —- I just want to be left in peace.
Dan the Woodcarvin Man is of the same mind, maybe more so. He got a new neighbor on the north side of his 5 acres, pretty much out of sight through a stand of woods, although with the new hound that came with the new couple, not exactly out of earshot. It drove him a little crazy all that incessant barking, and he spoke with the couple finally when it chased his cat up a tree and it took two days to get it to come back to terra firma. The wife flat out told him their dog never left the property and slammed the door behind her when she stomped back inside. Dan and the husband — he thought his name was Jesse — stood there in awkward silence. Until Jesse’s sweetheart stormed back out and told Jess to get his ass inside and Dan to get his off her property.
Robert Frost said good fences make good neighbors. He meant it ironically. A week after being thrown off their property, a gyppo with a chainsaw the size of a Ditch Witch rolled in and in an hour, half a dozen huge firs and cedars were kissing the ground, two on Dan’s fence and his property, one was even his own tree, a prized old cedar. The nice couple, when he mentioned it to them through a half open front door after he got home to discover the clearcut backyard, told him the tree in question was theirs and his fence was too. Woodcarvin Dan wanted to be Headcarvin Dan for a brainbusting moment or too, but murder, even down here, WILL bring the Law.
I’m not gonna tell you Dan’s a pacifist, but he doesn’t look for trouble either. He had the property surveyed to prove his claim, left the stakes ribboned and ran a new fence two feet inside those. A week later he received a court summons that informed him his neighbors were suing him for trespass, for threatening to kill their dog and for his surveyor’s trespassing as well. Dan hired a local lawyer, legal papers went back and forth with their attorney, they went to court and the judge ruled in Dan’s favor. So far he was only out $6000. Justice occasionally prevails, but it doesn’t come cheap.
Last I heard, Dan had gotten another legal letter from his neighbors’ lawyer, this time that he’d threatened to harm their kid. Dan’s never talked to the lad other than one time to ask him NOT to play in his pond. And the Neighborhood Association, according to Jesse’s wife, was going to file an insurance claim for their shed half on Dan’s property his fence runs into the middle of. Dan, nearly berserk and rapidly going broke, asked me for advice. Which tells you all you need to know about his state of exasperation and desperation.
Quit hiring attorneys, I said. Let them pay the legal fees. They’re bluffing, I said. They’re obviously insane. They’ll be bankrupt by the end of the year, the place will go on the market, they’ll move to a new place to torment someone else. Dan asked, “You really think so?” I said, “How the hell would I know, Dan?”
So Dan’s living in Paradise with the Neighbors from Hell, the Hitler Family. You tell me, so I can tell Dan, what’s he supposed to do? Maybe better fences might not make the neighbors better, but he wouldn’t have to look at them. I don’t think Dan wants to build the Wall of Jerusalem over there …. but he’s thinking about it.
Hits: 16