You call that "neighborly"? (aka kiss my ***!)

I got a text from my son a little while ago saying "you might get a call from the sheriff". Of course I call him back with all of the rage of the mother of an idiot teenager who's done something monumentally stupid. It turns out it had nothing to do with teenage male stupidity.

There was a LEO at the door, he's not sure if it was sheriff or state HP, threatening to ticket him for how his van was parked. We've been leaving the cars up between the house and the road for the last few days because of the snow. There's no way that my car, rear wheel drive with low and wide profile tires, and the van my son is driving, GMS safari with sketchy tires, will make it up and down the snow covered drive. Hell, my car has problems if it's too rainy. So we've parked the vehicles on OUR property. We were not violating any of the right of ways for the road or the neighbor's driveway.

But this LEO threatened my young, ignorant and stupid son with a ticket and told him a load of crap. My son gave the officer my number as the owner of the house and the cars parked there, and became very scared. I never received a call.

So, I called both the state Highway patrol office and the county sheriff's office to see what is going on. Neither had any record of any call for parking, let alone in my area. The HP office told me to call the DOT to see what the right of way on the road is and as long as we are not in that, they can't ticket us. The sherrif's office said they'd try to find the officer for me.

I got a call back from a different officer who knows my area and he said that as long as we are out of the road and not blocking vision from the state road 50 yards down there was nothing they could ticket us with. He agreed to meet me after work and advise me specifically what we can and can't do with our cars along the road and still be within the law. Kudo's to Bun Co Sheriff's dept for taking the time to look at this for me.

But here's the thing. I'm pretty sure that this all comes from the mean old curmudgeon on the hill. He used to own the whole area and it's been split among the kids and sold and split, ect. He put up ugly posts on the property line of our side yard so that we wouldn't use his driveway to pull into the lower end of our property. It would be really convenient to do so, but all he had to do would be to say, "hey, don't do that" and we would respect that. We've never met him, only spoken with his grandkids, neighbors, and LEO's that he's complained too/about. I'd bet a pound of merino wool that he complained to a "friend of the family" who is a deputy who come by off the books to talk about the problem. Even that doesn't bother me except that deputy didn't bother talking to the owner of the house or vehicle, he instead pissed with my naive, stupid young son. There's no way that anything can get resolved that way. It actually makes me really want to push the edge of my property rights. You can't imagine how ugly I can make the property line and call it an "artistic" fence. Not to mention the bunny manure pile has to go somewhere...

But I digress. My real concern is what every happened to being neighborly? There's a lot of ills that could be cured with a knock on the door and a discussion. You help us out, we help you out... because we are neighbors. Tim and I are pretty quiet and keep to ourselves for the most part. Yes, there is the occasional dirtbike-through-the-yard play time, but it's our yard not theirs and rarely after 8pm. We'd even share the dirt bike if the neighbors wanted to come play too.

As it stands, I'm not feeling very generous to our neighbors and don't feel inclined to give them any more consideration than the law requires me to. Since we are in a rural area with very few restrictions, that's not much.

Glad they are coming out. I would also bet the SO that came out will get a talking to. I would talk to the family about their family member. Might do some good.

I'm with Jimmy there. We've got some wicked neighbors too. They've never called the police on us or anything, but later on, I'll post up what HAS been happening...I'm sure you'll get a kick out of it. But yes, try talking to the family about their family member, SOMETIMES it helps, sometimes it does absolutely nothing. I hope it helps in your case.

Some people just can't seem to be neighborly. I've had those people in the past... not sure what that's all about, I try and be friendly to all my neighbors.. ya never know when you might be in trouble and really need their help.

Let's hope things don't get out of control with him.

My parents neighbor when I was growing up used to whine and complain all the time if I ever parked my Vega station wagon with even just the rear bumper hanging past the property line in front of his house. Same guy thought it was just fine a few yars later when he bought a 30'+ Winnebago and parked it out front blocking most of his entire house and half of my parents yard. I say if the supervisors come out and tell you it's ok to park there (which should be perfectly legal/safe with how wide the yard is there), next time that cop friend of his or anyone else complains, tell them to "pound sand". It's fairly common for people that have been living in a neighborhod for long time, to try pushing new neighbors around, just to see how far they can push (some sort of adult bully thing I guess). 9 tims out of 10, once they realize you aren't going to put up with any of it, they just tuck their tails and run.

I'd get a bunch of those lawn ornments of the old lady bent over and face them all towards the neighbor. But, make some changes to the nether region :-)

Well a really great guy from the Sheriff's dept came out and looked the situation over. I also called the right-of-way dept of the state DOT. So we now know exactly where the state right of way for the road ends and our private property begins. I was also advised that if it happens again to get the trooper's name and file my own complain against him. Seems that unless there is a complaint and/or report with the HP office, the trooper wasn't acting in an official capacity and therefor subject to the same laws and treatment given to any jerk that comes onto my porch and bitches about dumb sh....

Cool, so I'm just going to take a wild guess, and believe you are perfectly fine parking between the road and the fence at the top of th property? Seems like it's plenty wide enough right there.