Neighbors

One reason I can't wait to move out to the country is to get away from the constant stream of renters moving in and out of the house next door. There have been more than a dozen different people occupying that place over the 15 years we've been here. Several of them have been pleasant and engaging, but for the most part they all share the same mode of living... no money to pay the rent but they never run out of cigarettes, beer and drugs. They always have at least one junk car sitting in the yard, at least one dog and usually a bunch of kids running around. The current occupant is no exception. A single woman, she and her kids moved in about three months ago. Even though it's only a one bedroom house there are at least five people living there, although it's hard to say with everyone coming and going all the time. About a month ago they pulled the required junk car into the yard and a few weeks before that they acquired the much needed mutt to stake outside and poop all over the place. When I was outside working the other day I picked up the odor of smoking grass... and not the kind that I had just mowed. This disturbs me a great deal because of the type of person the woman seems to be. I've been in the retail business all my life so I've met tens of thousands of different people and can kind of get a feel about someone. I get a scary feeling about this lady, the kind of feeling that says if she got mad at you she would make up a story and get you in trouble with the law just to watch them take you away. So I've decided to try to avoid her as much as possible.

Over the last year I've really started to worry about things like being falsely accused of something, ever since the very thing happened to a friend of mine and I saw the hell he was put through. He is a well respected, well liked person who I have known for about fifteen years, and all it took was a disturbed woman to say that he came to her house and tried to attack and rob her for his reputation to be shattered. His name was put in the paper (although hers never was) and he was suspended from his job of 25 years until it was resolved. In the end there was a trial where there was no evidence whatsoever except her word against his. The case was dismissed, but not before the judge stated that he thought my friend was "probably guilty"??!! That really instills in me a lot of trust in our judicial system! The notion of "innocent until proven guilty" has really gone out the window.