Good fences make good neighbors.

I love living in a smaller community. Except when I was a teenager, and couldn't wait to move to The Big City. But now, am grateful for having a community. Devonians are good people and it's a great community to live in. We've lived here for six years without a problem. Until now.

I like to believe that we're decent neighbors. Sure, our lawn isn't perfectly manicured. We don't plant pretty flowers, or have the most gorgeous house on the block, but we also don't host all night parties, blaring music until three in the morning, dropping beer cans on the lawns down the street. We don't have roaming cats and dogs, crapping everywhere, getting into fights and into your garbage. We don't have noxious weeds in our yard, spreading everywhere. We don't store a year's worth of garbage beside our house. There are no dead animals on our lawn. We're not dealing drugs out our back door. We're quiet, keep to ourselves, and are pleasant to everyone.

But I'm tired of dealing with stupid, inconsiderate people. If they're not doing the above mentioned atrocities, then they're trampling into our yards - destroying our property to re-side their garage, they're hacking down our trees causing permanent damage to the branches - splitting them right down to the trunk and leaving the branches in our yard to deal with. Or they're coming into our pet's enclosed run to do whatever they please. They complain to the Town about the "lack of maintenance" on our lawn or for not shoveling the walks fast enough in the winter. I had an incident on the weekend, where a neighbor of ours was willfully blocking the alley. I waited for 15 minutes before honking and attempting to drive away before he verbally assaulted me, and physically assaulted my truck.

What the HELL is it with people in my town lately? They have become (or have always been?) self-serving, self centered creeps! Why is it so hard to be courteous? Inform your neighbors of your intentions. Ask for their help, or their assistance. I would gratefully have helped move our stuff out of the way so it didn't get damaged during the siding project. I would have been pleased to help trim our tree with them - it probably wouldn't have gotten damaged that way. Whatever happened to neighbors talking to each other, informing each other, checking up on each other? My grass wasn't mowed promptly? My sidewalk not shovelled? Don't call the Town to issue a formal complaint - come on over and talk to me. And I'll do the same for you. You may find out the reason it took so long to shovel the walk was because of a death or an illness. But here I am assuming my neighbors are reasonable people, when they clearly are not.

Maybe I grew up in a time that will never come again - where neighbors knew each other. You had block parties, and had coffee with the people in your block. Even on farms, they helped thy neighbor - even one miles away. My grandmother (who died over 60 years ago, and whom I never met). Was SUCH a model of neighborly love, that those that remember her are STILL trying to pay back their debt to her through her children and grandchildren. If you go to visit one of her neighbors, they will treat you like royalty. They said she was the first one on hand when anyone ever needed anything, whether for a cup of sugar, first aid, or a mid-wife. She is the reason my neighbors rallied around my grandfather after she died to help raise his children. Isn't that was neighbors should be? Or at the very least offering a common courtesy and the bare minimum of politeness. I guess that time is long gone. And I'm sad because of it. Not that I want my neighbors to be my best friends, but because that common courtesy is what I want in my community.

But now, until these people move, I can't wait to build a giant fence and forget they exist. I'm not going to afford them the same respect they will not afford me. Maybe they've been turned off by the few assholes they've had the misfortune of living beside, but I'm now soured on them. Do good fences make good neighbors? No - but they make living beside these poor neighbors a bit more tolerable.