Good Neighbors, wish I had them

Good Neighbors, Wish I had them.

Cap held a loaded shot gun. “I’m seventy-five. I’ve lived my life. I’ll be doing the world a favor getting rid of that kid,” Cap told his visitor
A twenty-two-year-old, in the apartment upstairs, played loud rap music all night. His friends yelled obscenities, slammed doors and dropped cigarettes on the cars below. A cigarette burned a streak in the hood of a car a friend had loaned Cap. The friends drove BMWs and Hummers. The twenty-two-year-old’s parents are well off Ocean City business owners.
Cap’s landlord gave the “kid” two week’s notice to vacate the building, but he won’t leave until forced out. Cap consulted the Sheriff, who pulled up the kid’s arrest record, seventeen arrests since he was eighteen and in trouble since he was ten. The sheriff said it could be six weeks or more before the kid could be evicted. Meanwhile, a deputy drove by one night. The apartment grew quiet until the deputy left. Then the ruckus began again.
I experienced a similar situation years ago.
3 a.m. loud speakers blaring Jimmy Buffet, dogs barking, men yelling, shot guns blasting.
My neighbor had rented her farm house to a brother and sister who worked in a restaurant. She said they were good people; she wouldn’t rent her house to anyone who wasn’t trustworthy. After renting the house, she moved to Texas. The brother had an Appaloosa horse. He asked if I would board it on my farmette. I took in the horse for $30 a month plus feed. Three months later, Brother hadn’t paid me, but he had thrown all night keg parties and bought a Great Dane puppy. He also sublet rooms to 6 or 7 others.
I told him I couldn’t keep the horse for nothing. Brother tacked fiberglass roofing sheets to a dilapidated barn on my neighbor’s property and tied the horse to my wood fence with an extension cord. The roof blew off the barn and the horse ended up wandering the neighborhood for weeks that winter. Then I locked it in my stable and filed a claim in court. The sheriff got up with Brother at work and told him he had to pay me and move the horse. After paying me and receiving my tongue lashing, Brother paid a man with a trailer to move the horse. The man with the trailer reported he took the horse to an old couple’s farm. They were parents to Brother’s girlfriend and surprised to see a huge horse installed in their chicken house. They were not at all prepared to care for a horse.
One morning, I found the Great Dane lying by the highway with a broken leg. A farmer helped me put it in my truck and I took it to a veterinarian, explaining it wasn’t my dog.
I knocked on my neighbor’s door and Sister’s boyfriend answered. He said they had thrown the dog out because it wasn’t house broken. Later they threw Brother out, too. He had collected money, but not paid the bills.
Meanwhile, more loud parties from 2 to 6 a.m. My neighbor called from Texas. The renters hadn’t paid the rent for months. She tried to call them, but they wouldn’t answer. Would I talk to them? I told her about the situation.
My husband, a fisherman, got up at 2 a.m. to go to work and didn’t understand why I was so mad at the neighbors when he got home in the afternoon. “We used to party when we were that age.”
“Not like that!”
A party. Cars parked on the public road and in my drive way. At least 100 people, many minors. The party animals drove an old car around the yard and then shot out the windows and beat on it with pipes. When they finished that one, they started on another one that wasn’t in use because the owner, Sister’s boyfriend, had lost his license.
The next morning, I saw where the party animals had driven through my fence, destroying a ten-foot section. Horses were in the field at the time. I walked over to the farm house. Debris scattered everywhere. An empty keg, bottles, cans. I knocked on the door and saw people passed out on the floor. Finally Sister’s boyfriend showed up. I complained about the noise and the damaged fence. He said I was trespassing and called the police.
I walked home and called the police, myself. They asked, “Why didn’t you go to the party?” The Party animals had told him I was invited.
Police never came to my house, but a month later, the no-account neighbor who lived in a house behind mine told me the police left a note on her door saying everything was okay.
My neighbor in Texas died that winter. The following spring, I was tying a horse out in a field behind her house when two young men I’d never seen before approached me. “Would you tie that horse someplace else?” they requested in a polite tone.
“Why?”I asked.
“We just planted tomatoes there.”
I looked at the “tomatoes.” “That’s pot,” I said and left the horse there to trample it. Since I believe the drug laws are wrong, I didn’t turn them in. If the partiers had just quietly smoked dope, I wouldn’t have minded. It was the nerve wracking noise that kept me up all night.
Things got quiet at my neighbor’s house that summer. Black plastic bags of garbage piled up by the back door, but I didn’t see or hear much from the occupants. When I did, they told me one of the sub-leasers hadn’t paid rent and sneaked out a window one night. The pound husky that barked constantly bit one of them and they returned it to the pound. The phone and electric were cut off. A sheriff’s deputy knocked on the door every week with summons for various misdemeanors and an eviction notice. Sister’s boyfriend went to jail for DWI. I enjoyed watching events unfold at the old farm house that summer. By autumn, only rat-infested garbage and wrecked cars remained at the farm house.
The next time Cap’s friend visited, Cap informed him, “My landlord told the kid that he and I were going to take him to court if he wasn’t out of there in two weeks. He didn’t want to hear that. The sheriff says he’s going to stake out the next place the kid moves to.”