THE STUPID NEIGHBOUR BLOG

Linda writes:

Love your site. Want to share a bad neighbor story with you.

Many years ago, when I was first married, my husband and I bought a nice 3-bedroom ranch house in a neighborhood of ranch houses. To the left of us were some neighbors who knew just about everything about the neighborhood. They were nice older folks, but they knew all about everyone. Us being the new neigobors in the neighborhood and being newlyweds, they wanted to be sure they kept an eye on our house and gave us advice now and then.

There was a house across the street that was owned by a landlord who rented it out frequently. A young couple moved in who had a couple of small children.

One summer, I had left my car outside because I was refinishing furniture in my garage. I could not put the car in the garage until the project was done so I expected to have it outside for a few more days.

One night during that summer, the neighbors across the street were having a big party, charcoal grill, fireworks, beer, you name it! One big loud obnoxious party.

It was loud for quite a while, but we did not complain. About 11:30 that night, my next door neighbor calls us on the phone. They said they saw someone from the house across the street sneak over to our house and steal the battery out of my car.

Can you believe that! We were flabbergasted, and we didn't know who to believe. So my husband and I went outside in our robes, etc. We asked the good neighbor and the bad neighbor to tell their side of the story. When the arguing was finally over, no one came up with the battery. My husband finally told the bad neighbor to get off our property and keep the hell out of our yard or he'd call the police in the future.

Then when we went to get back into our house, I found out that I had accidentally locked the screen door. Of course, my husband could not look like a wimp now, so he had to proceed to bust the screen door in front of the bad neighbor.

Anyway, these idiots lived across the street from us for about 6 months. I always gave them dirty looks when I saw them drive by, and always cursed at them whenever I saw them. I never gave in. They finally moved away, and I was pleased to see the day that it happened.

Ca1v1n Replies:

I totally understand how frustrating it can be when your buy a nice house in a nice neighbourhood only to discover that there is a "rental" just across the street or next door. You can almost always count on these houses to have been "let go" to some extent, not have as nice a yard, etc. When I lived in Kitchener, Ontario there was such a house two doors down. During the three years I lived there a stream of about 6 different tenents rented the place.

One day I got home from work and was suprised to discover my garbage can was missing. I looked up and down the street (thinking the wind had blown it away after it had been emptied that morning) but was never able to find out. The next day I noticed the neighbours two doors down had moved out. About a week later I noticed my garbage can was right next to the front door of this now empty house. It had probably been there all the time but I had just noticed it.

I went to grab it and it was as heavy as a bag of cement. I opened it up. The bastards who had moved out and emptied the contents of their fridge into the garbage can. It was stacked to the rim with various jars of food, salad dressing, ketchup, etc. It had been rotting for about a week and reeked to high heaven. I couldn't exactly just drag it to the curb because the garbage pickup would not even take it since everything was just thrown in loose and not even in a plastic bag.

I actually had to empty each item by hand into 3 separate plastic garbage bags and then clean out the can in a feeble attempt to get rid of the smell. Now I admit my "cleaning" involved leaving it out in the rain for a few days then letting it dry and spraying it with Lysol (then repeating).

Thankfully the folks who moved in the next weekend were very good neighbours (for renters). They actually did alot of landscaping and really cleaned up the lot.