pennwalk said:
EastTexFrank, We have one family in our neighborhood that everyone jokes must be in the witness protection program because they don't talk to anybody. I don't have any problem with them because their house is real nice and they keep the yard up and they are very quiet. People are different. Luckily there are fun outgoing people in the neighborhood too.
Chris
I think a lot of how well you know your neighbors depends on the size of tracts around you. Our area is divided into mostly 10-12 acre tracts and we have lots of trees. Some have subdivided their properties and have houses much closer together. The closer neighbors always seem to have the most problems in the neighborhood.
I enjoy making nicknames for my neighbors based on thier most distinctive personality trait. There is Pow-Pow Larry who likes to shoot guns all the time. Chainsaw Bob is the guy who had no electricity and decided to use a chainsaw to cut the framing lumber for his house. Junkyard Paul ran a full-fledged junkyard on his place, but he died this last year and his son, Spike (real name) now runs this "jewel" of the neighborhood. Then there is Doggy-Dog the Cajun down at the end of the road who has a pen full of barking dogs at his house. You never see this guy without two or three of those dogs in his van with him. He used to let them run loose until the mailman ran over one. Doggy-Dog was was furious at the postman even though his dogs were all chasing the car and ran in front of him.
We have had some real characters living out here and I'm probably one of them too. I've got this old crooked barn that was here when I bought the place and it really needs to be torn down. Unfortunately, it is full of junk (old furniture, old riding mowers, and a 3-wheel utility vehicle. That doesn't sound too bad, but I've managed to stack and pile enough other junk around them that you can't tell what is on the bottom of the pile. I even have an old antique Mosler safe in there somewhere.
The only good thing about it is that my junk is all in one place and it isn't blowing all over the neighborhood or really even visible.
I'm reminded by pennwalk's story of the guy who started building a house just off a major highway in our area. It was one of those A-frame kit homes and pretty darn large. He got the whole thing framed and the OSB on it in about 3 months. It was one of those things that you could tell he was using every spare minute to build this thing by himself. Then, one day things just stopped. The house sat there with piles of building materials deteriorating. It began to deteriorate and finally after sitting for two years, the whole structure just collapsed into a heap. I heard various stories about why he had stopped building, but don't know any of them for sure. Stuff happens...
