Steeler

I wish I had your stomach for acrimony. Keep at it!

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Rincewind

Keep us updated!

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~~ Veritas simplex oratio est ~~
No matter how far a wizard goes, he will always come back for his hat. --T. Pratchett

<---- You know you're getting old when you rely on your forum meta-data to remind you how old you are.

Required Reading for all TG sandboxers

ScratchMonkey

Mount one of these on your car and give it a toot when the dog starts barking.

Action video

The letters section is pretty entertaining.

I want to get a calliope for my roommate to mount in his little Datsun 510.

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Pickle

On the left I had this anal retentive neighbor that would complain about everything. He was in his late 50’s and had his grown son living with him. I thought it was weird and he was weird but hey. Well he moves (flipped the house actually) and my wife and I are hoping for a nice family with children the same age as ours. Well, we can dream right?

A 48 year old woman, her 17 year old son and her 26 year old boyfriend move in. I am putting on the best face that I can but my spider sense is going off like a Chinese new year. My wife and I play the good neighbor part (something we believe strongly in) and go over with food to introduce ourselves. Everything goes fine but I can tell that the boyfriend is a P.O.S. and the 17 year old kid isn’t much better. This makes me wonder about mom / sugar momma.

For some reason after I tell them what I do for a living (LE) relations seem to cool a bit starting from their side. Sure we still wave to each other from our respective driveways when we happen to be in them at the same time. Which actually isn’t all that much despite the suburban living. I also don’t know who I am waving at sometimes as there is a different car in the driveway on a weekly, sometimes daily basis.


About 2 months ago I hear my doorbell ring at 4:30 in the morning. I am instantly awake and my feet hit the floor. Adrenaline is a wonderful drug! 1-2 seconds after my bare feet hit the wood floor of my bedroom I hear someone yell the magical words, “Get on the ground! Put your hands out where I can see them!” Within 15 seconds my pants and belt are on, my gun is on my hip (got my spare mag too) my flashlight is in hand and my I.D. is in my back pocket as I am at the front door. I check the peephole….nothing. I slowly go outside and am told to go back in by the friendly Popo. I tell them who I am by shining my flashlight beam on my work identification and they ignore me for the rest of the night. Like I am just another exterior house fixture they can’t move. Fine by me.

Yes, it is my 26 year old neighbor proned out on his driveway. Four squad cars, one SWAT guy and lots of testosterone are on my street. They get the guy to co-operate and he gets put in the back seat of the patrol car. Then the police get on the bullhorn to call out the 17 year old kid and his friend. For 20 minutes the police are on the bullhorn and these POS kids are not coming out. It is now 5AM for crying out loud! Let me ask all TG’ers here a question. You have done nothing wrong and the police are asking you politely to come out of the house. Why would you wait for 20 minutes? Why would you wait at your upstairs window looking at the police, listening to what they have to say and still not come out? BECAUSE YOU ARE A PIECE OF CRAP AND HAVE SOMETEHING TO HIDE!!! Unfortunately the police were not there to serve a warrant or search the house. I am sure they would have found something. Eventually the kids (I use the term only in a legal sense as they were under 18) come out.

Turns out the neighbors were in a town a few miles away. That town is the same one they moved from to get away from gang members and bad influences on the kid. The sugar momma told me this. While in this town, boyfriend puts a gun to sugar momma’s head and threatens to kill her. At least this is what I was told later. The po-lice arrive and boyfriend is gone. They track him to my street as he is walking up the street to our homes. Apparently boyfriend sees the popo and ducks into my porch ringing my doorbell. Hello!?!?! I am armed you jackass and you know what I do for a living. He was either high or chronically stupid. Perhaps both or maybe my nice neighbor routine really worked. I think he thought I might answer the door and invite him in for some chronic. Actually he was probably going to pull the old, “Hey can I use your phone?” routine.

The next day two cars that I vaguely remember seeing at some distant point in the past are parked in the neighbor’s driveway. One is a silver neon and the other is a black Jag. I still don’t know how they afford a Jag. But I suppose if they can afford a 500k home they can afford a Jag. Well, all door panels on the neon were kicked in. Whoever did it did a pretty good job. But the most impressive display of hatred was on the Jag. It was keyed. And I don’t mean a single key stroke. Whoever did this was a maestro of car keying. The car looked like someone had a seizure while they were attempting to put one key stroke on the car. For those of you with kids think of your child’s first drawing with crayons…now add hatred and adult muscle! Yeah, like that.

Like most women in the same situation guess what she did after this? Yep, she took him back. Now, I a doubting some of what I heard because he was out of jail pretty quick for those serious charges. Unless of course she denied it ever happened. We all know how seldom that happens right?

I know one of the local policemen and he pulled them over one night (before this) and said that he thinks they are up to no good. Really? I never knew. Lately the police have been sitting at the bottom of our street. Just parking their car and waiting…hmmmmmm.

Well, we don’t talk or wave to each other from our driveways. I guess Mayberry will have to wait.

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leejo

Pickle for teh win!!!

I had some shady neighbors renting a house a few doors down a few years ago. Lots of 30 minute visitors in shady vehicles. Lots of scumbag foot traffic.

One day I noticed two men sitting in the driveway of a vacant house across the street. They were there for a few hours, so I called the cops and gave them the info.

A few hours later I was watching some tube in the living room when I saw several guys walking through my front yard. Got up to look. Yep, they're wearing windbreakers. Turned out my friends down the street had a bunch of stolen property and probably some meth. I only got the info from neighbors.

So yeah, the police raid in the neighborhood is never a good sign.

AMosely

Wow pickle, land of fruit and nuts is right! Insane.

I am really enjoying this thread, by the way. Good stories.

Kerostasis

Impressively disturbing stories, guys. The worst I've had was an attempted suicide next door. What made that one worse was that we knew the family, and my sister was friends with one of their kids.

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perry

When I was in elementary school, we moved to Augusta, GA from Columbus, GA (Army family) and bought a house from some folks that have moved right next door. As a little kid, I couldn't figure out why a family would move to the next house over.. we had moved across the state, ya know? Wasn't until a couple years later that my parents told me that their son had committed suicide in my room and the family wanted to get away from the bad memories. After Augusta, we moved to Japan... and while I was living there I found out that someone had committed suicide in our house.

No ghosts in either house.

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ScratchMonkey

About 10 years ago my roommates and I had a crack house next door. The landlord finally kicked them out for the trouble and they torched the place at 3 am. The longest 5 minutes of my life was standing in the front yard with the garden hose keeping the flames down while switching hose-holding hands because it was so hot, waiting for the fire trucks. My roommate was on our roof with a double-hose from my mom's house (next one down) raining water from above. Fortunately it was a windless night or the fire would have swept the block. (It usually blows a gale here.)

The landlord rebuilt, and let a friend of his girlfriend stay there, but the place started going downhill again, so a year after the fire the landlord put the place on the market to get rid of the hassle. My roommates and I were heading off for his birthday celebration when we saw a realtor pull up to put his lock on the door and a sign in the yard. We jumped out and got all the info.

Shortly after that, the house was mine! We cleaned the yards (yuck!), repainted, wired for alarm, did a bit of landscaping, and now it's a pretty nice place. I refer to the trio of houses (my mom's, my roommates, and mine) as "The Estate".

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Rincewind

Whoo boy, I guess I could rant on the places I used to live, but I just dont have the stamina. I mean, it hurts to remember the "good times" me and my wife used to have with our neighbors.

Suicides (yes. plural.), drug raid, assault and battery, termites, black mold, the quintessential loud gay porno guy upstairs, druggy neighbors, noise violations... I could go on but it makes me seriously depressed to think about the bad neighbors I've had in the past. It just makes me glad to be where I am now. And I'm still looking for my karma handout.

Although, I've had some truly awesome neighbors as well. And when I think about them, it almost makes me forget about the losers I've lived next to.

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~~ Veritas simplex oratio est ~~
No matter how far a wizard goes, he will always come back for his hat. --T. Pratchett

<---- You know you're getting old when you rely on your forum meta-data to remind you how old you are.

Required Reading for all TG sandboxers

leejo

Oh jeeze boohoo Rincewind. Get some thick skin will ya? Sheesh.

Kerostasis

These don't count?

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DudeMan

ok well i have been lucky, for the last 13 yearsi have lived without any.... but before that, and i was a young child at the time... me and my brother used to play in our backyard.... shock horror.... and we used to play football, my parents being the responsable parents they are, forced us only to play with those little plastic floater footballs.... (football in the UK term) these things cannot break anything... they will bust before they break windows, you cant dent cars.... you get the picture, they are completly harmless.... but whenever the ball went over the fence into next door, the mean old beotch would come out of her house, pick up the ball and bust it, just because it was in her garden. i mean seriously, we would be asking can we have our ball back and she would bust it...

when we got told off for the 200th time about my mum having to buy new balls, we told her what happened, and she was shocked... she went over to the womans house to ask if we were causing damage in any way, and also tosay if she has a problem to tell her and she will deal with it... and i remember vividly the reply because i was there with my mum.... "its my garden ill do as i please, you shouldnt let your brats play with footballs in the garden" i mean the context of it... i was about 7 or younger, my brother 10 or younger... its just mind boggling.... she was a lonely old woman....maybe she is just bitter....

but i learned a lesson that day, and so did my mum.... i learned that some people arehorrid buggers for no reason... and my mum learnt to buy us hard leather balls, because she didnt care ifwe broke anything in her house anymore..... which we never did incidentally. we moved not long after that... not because of something as trivial as that my dad got a job with an onsite living contract.

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The Queen
"Those who perpetrate these brutal acts against innocent people should know that they will not change our way of life,"
Atrocities such as these simply reinforce our sense of community

TheFeniX
"Guns don't kill people: effeminate men in green tunics do"

JMJ

5/26, AM Edition:

So last night comes and goes and the neighbor doesn't stop by to talk to me about my wife's bumper. He wasn't even home as of 9pm anyway. This morning about 7:50am my wife says "He's coming up to the house now." So I met him and his wife at the door and we went to look at the bumper. He asked if I'd be willing to try and get it buffed/rubbed out first, to which I said "sure". Of course he has "his" shop, but I am willing to try this. I told him that if that didn't work, I want the work done at my shop where they just fixed it LAST WEEK. He said "ok".

Now to the "interesting" stuff. He said something along the lines of "I know you're the confrontational neighbor and I just want to get along here." Heh, if you think what I'm doing now is confrontational, you haven't seen anything yet. I have been nothing but polite with them each and every time I have spoken with them. However, this comment opened the door for me to hammer on them about their dog again. I explained to them that I'm not trying to be confrontational, that I'm just trying to solve the problem amongst us and not bring in police or animal control. They explained that they didn't think he was a problem, to which I told them that most of the neighbors can't stand the dog. I told them that everyone else was just too afraid to say anything and that some had said they would call animal control. They said "maybe we just don't hear it like you do because it's our dog." This I know is very possible. Still, the dog is annoying as hell. I told them right there that their dog woke me up around 6am for the last 3 mornings straight (tues-thurs). She said "are you sure it's our dog?" I said "Yes, I looked out the window and watched him bark like crazy. I'm positive it's him." So I spent some time talking to them about good zap collars and how I trained my little yapper to stop. Who knows, they may or may not try something else, but they are aware that it's annoying more than just me.

So, this morning wouldn't be complete without something good to throw into the mix, would it? I'm on my way to work and my wife calls me. She says "I just spoke with xxxxx-neighbor and I told them you talked with the problem neighbors again. Hopefully they'll correct the problem." To which xxxx-neighbor replies "Too late, my wife already spoke with animal control, they will be paying them a visit today."

Heh, oh well. I'm hoping they'll know it's not me since I told them I'd rather talk to them than go to animal control, and that a lot of the other neighbors might go to animal control. Either way, I'm sure I'll hear something else this afternoon

Keres

I had the greatest set of neighbors in the world, and then one of the families moved away. In their place moved this really strange group of people whose elementary school-age daughter would sit in the front lawn with nothing but panties on playing with headless barbies. So no real complaints about neighbors on my end but still kind of strange.

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Zephyr: Besides Wyzcrak and his godly voice; the kind of voice that you will expect to say "Zephyr, I need you to build an ark at Marine Start, with room for two of every structure so that I may turret spam for 40 days and 40 nights" that is.

Squeak:Sometimes I'm awed by zibs genius. Then I remember he's Canadian and I feel significantly less threatened.