The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Tea Party Ted, my neighbor here on the Don’t-Tread-On-Me South End is doing some major Martha Stewarting on his high bluff property. He’d had a little problem with water draining into his house so to solve it he trenched along the side, dropped in what we call a French Drain (what Francophobes prefer to call a ditch with perforated pipe) and shunted the water away from his hacienda.

Like a lot of us down here, Ted’s not much for permits. Course, Ted’s not much for anything except Ted. The Law of the Jungle works pretty well for the Teds of the world, you just need to own more guns than the rest of us and be twice as mean. I was down at his place the day he was laying pipe. The pipe ran off into the shrubbery, made a sneaky left turn and headed toward the bluff where I assumed he’d hooked up a ‘tight line’, a solid pipe that would reach to the beach below so the run-off wouldn’t erode the bluff.

“To hell with that,” Ted replied to my inquiry. “Same water, same bluff.” I wandered over for a look-see. “What’re you?” he growled, obviously irritated. “The *%##@! EPA?” Ted had put his run-off over toward the edge of his property, but above his neighbor down the hill whose house sat precipitously close to an unstable bluff. The last thing they needed was more water working on the erosion beneath them.

There was a time — about when I first got here — when there were so few of us it didn’t much matter what we did, it didn’t affect any neighbors. I miss those days, I really do, but with boys like Ted still playing outlaw down the road, I’ve come to appreciate a few rules. Saves me strapping on the gunbelt, if nothing else.

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This entry was posted on Monday, February 2nd, 2015 at 4:35 pm and is filed under rantings and ravings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.