So that some of this makes some sense, you may want to check out my other little story regarding the new house, called New Abode. Now, you might get the impression that this is blatant commercialism, but the last time I looked the stories were free. I’m just trying to be helpful!
As you may recall, we moved into the new house which filled the needs of our growing family. More bedrooms, more bathrooms, more space and more problems. Not only was there work that had to be done on the interior to make life suitable and get Blue-eyes off my back, but we had to go about taming the jungle on this rather large lot. Blue-eyes had developed a rather lengthy “honey do” list. After some review and prioritizing, I could see that my weekends were shot for at least the next two years.
You might say that our new home was in an open space, because there were literally no fences between the properties on either side, with the exception of fencing that imprisoned the horses, but didn’t do much to control the horse flies. There were seven horses adjacent to the property, not including our own. This produced so much horse poop that some of these flies were as big as a small bird. If we failed to close the screen door, which was often practiced by the curtain climbers, we would be invaded by these huge flies and it was reminiscent of the scene out of a movie called “The Birds.” I was waiting for Alfred Hitchcock to show up at any moment.
We had one small fence surrounding a dead or dying lawn, but it did not enclose the property. We had a swimming pool and our insurance company mandated that the property be fenced. That made it high on the priority list. The unique view from our back patio was this rather ugly fence, and then a whole bunch of dead trees and high brush growth including – much to my chagrin – poison oak and wild blackberry bushes.
This little development had been built on what had been a walnut orchard, however most of the trees were in extremely bad shape and would eventually have to be removed. What little fruit the trees produced was being consumed by a multitude of squirrels. I’m not talking about just a “few” of these little beasts. At one point, I counted 11 squirrels in two trees munching away. It was clear that the only thing the squirrels had to do was consume walnuts and reproduce. Where did I go wrong?
This overpopulation was corrected – not by me and my trusty lever-action, Red Ryder BB gun. The local hawks initiated a slow elimination program of this squirrel heaven with a “swoop and grab” strategy, mostly executed in the morning. Breakfast is served.
I would watch this demonstration of Mother Nature in action with my morning coffee. Blue-eyes didn’t want any part of it and told me I was being “ghoulish.” My reply to that was it was not much worse than the morning news on TV. We were getting our butts kicked in Vietnam, and I found watching that was a pretty disgusting way to begin the day.
The hawks would sit patiently in a tree and wait until a squirrel hit the ground with its booty filling its cheeks, and usually the little varmints were toast. The more combat-savvy squirrels would wait until this predator would finish its dive and then take off for shelter, zigzagging like a World War II convoy. Sometimes they would wait, and two or three would scamper away at the same time. Those survivors were clever little devils. I could swear on more than one occasion I could hear the Hawks humming “Come fly with me.” The rest of this problem was resolved, for the most part, when I removed many of the trees.
The area that I wanted to enclose was about 200’ x 200’ x 150.’ That’s a lot of grape stakes and a whole bunch of holes for fence posts. I found the real meaning of terra firma was really “terribly firm.” The ground was not just adobe, but clay adobe, and during the summer, was hard as a rock. You couldn’t dig a hole without soaking the ground with water. Even though I had an auger, it was pure hell. I did discover that if things ever really got tough economically, I had a lot of adobe brick raw material and could go into the brick business. I did in fact make a small adobe wall out of our marvelous soil, however, the second time it rained it melted!
So, I began the process of digging post holes every eight feet, and approximately 18 inches deep. I know this is boring, however it will get interesting in a hurry. I’m putting holes adjacent to one of my neighbor’s property lines and as I got down about a foot or so, I noticed the hole filling with water. What the hell is this? I can’t believe that the water table would be that high, and then there was this terrible odor. I came to the conclusion that this was runoff from my neighbor’s septic tank. No wonder his small lawn was so green. This emission also provided an answer as to why that part of my property was like a bloody jungle.
I called him to show him what was happening. He was already unhappy with me because I was putting in fencing. He didn’t even offer to help install this proposed good neighbor fencing, let alone pay for any portion of it. I got even though, by placing the rough ugly side facing his property, not mine. Now he was even more PO’d because I had uncovered the fact that his septic tank was not working properly. The guy had no sense of humor. The upside of this was I didn’t have to put water into the ready-mix to plant the post. This area had so much fertilized water that the redwood posts seemed to me to begin to grow. I exaggerate, but I really expected it.
After I had dug all those holes and had secured the fence posts, my buddy came out and stated he thought the fence was on his property. I commented that I had found the property stakes and had basically put the fence better than 3 feet away from the property line. I took this friendly son of a gun (I cleaned that up), and showed him the surveyor stakes that revealed the property lines. This proved that the fence was indeed well behind that line. He didn’t say much, turned around and left.
Now, after the fact, the fence is up and I happened to go out front where one of the surveyor stakes had been driven into the ground. This is an 18 inch, metal stake. The stake was missing! Someone had dug it up. Hell, we’re talking over an acre of ground – three or four feet don’t much matter. Clearly this guy had a severe burr up his behind. I think that’s one of the last conversations we ever had. We eventually signed a non-aggressive treaty which included a clause that stated neither one of us existed.
To confirm the old saying “fruit does not fall far from the tree,” one of his sons came over about a month later and said that our dog’s barking was keeping him awake at night, and that if we did not control him he would call the Sheriff. I mentioned to this “Chip off the old block” that I was pretty sure it was not our dog, and he stated unequivocally that he knew it was “Rusty.” I looked at him and said that would be very difficult, because Rusty had been run over by a truck three weeks ago. This interesting young person just looked at me, turned around and left. I don’t think he was Chairman of the “welcome to the neighborhood” committee!
The guy on the other side was the complete opposite. He was a Naval Academy graduate and ex-pilot who had bent up some airplanes, and decided that real estate was a better place to be. So he was very happy when we moved in and began making improvements. He helped me put up fence posts and grape stakes, and watched as I consistently hit my fingers rather than the nail. He thought that was pretty hysterical, and I think I called him a “swab jockey idiot.” They had this huge Palomino horse that was slowly eating his corral, and I mentioned that I hoped he would not go after my fence. He said not to worry, they were moving him on to some other property. I got to ride this beast a number of times and I took Lucky, our horse, along just to show him what a real horse looked like. It did not improve Lucky’s disposition at all.
This was a really nice neighborhood, with the one exception duly noted. The houses were better than 100 or more feet apart and you rarely heard your neighbor. Facts are, you rarely saw your neighbor. We got to know most of the neighbors through their offspring, because we became Kids Central shortly after we moved in. When we bought our house it could’ve been classified as the ugliest house in the neighborhood. So for the most part, we received a warm welcome with our various projects. Over the years, it became a really great place to live and we all have very fond memories of the new abode.
Moral of the story – Love thy neighbor, but make sure you know where the property line is.
J.J. Addingnuttin 