Just a cruel old bitch...is what I say

See life in the South manifest in wild and weird ways,
all written down for all to read...

My wonderful life as a blogger is exactly what I want it to be. I have a forum to prevaricate and tell the truth too...to whom I now decide to write about, their names shall be changed, but should they decide to read, they will know of what I speak.

Have you ever known real harassment? Harassment to a degree, that you have to leave your home behind, because a neighbor can not stay out of your life? Have you ever not been able to satisfy their demands of the a glistening yard full of grass...the mowing kind, not the smoking kind?

For more than 25 years, my life, that of my parents, and fiance became the bane of my wonderful neurotic neighbor's, The Andy Georges (note not the correct name).

When I was growing up, Daddy would come home on Friday, after a long week on the road...one of his company's top salesmen. He would be tired, but not so much so to want to cook out on the grill...and he could cook!

Several years of cooking out, the Andy George's asked if he would not cook out on Friday night, as they, being Catholic, and not allowed to eat meat on Fridays; Well it offended them.

Oh, pooo nanny poo poo.

Being the good neighbor that he was, Daddy obliged. Rather than cook steaks, he would buy rainbow trout in Arkansas, bring it home and cook it instead.

When Dad brought me a Great Dane, and he grew up into a small pony, Mrs. Andy George would call her neighbors, a ritual she perfected over the years, complaining about Duke turning over their trash cans.

NOT!

Two weeks after we moved him to south Mississippi, to a veterinarian friend of the family, she called to complain again...well, you should have heard my mother tell her that he had been gone for two weeks, which I thought had shut her up...

NOT!

I had been gone for several years, married, my father's death, my divorce and returning home when Mother had a heart attack.

When I began dating my husband of 25 years, Mrs. Andy George would call my mother asking when we would be getting married.

When speaking with an attorney friend of ours, Mrs. Andy George stuck her head over her fence and said, "Your Daddy would just die if he could see the yard now."

To which I replied, "I believe that is what killed him."

You see, 3 days before he passed, he went through the yard, cutting back all the shrubs, that he had meticulously manicured for nearly thirty years, to the stumps. Mother went outside and asked him what he was doing and he said he was just tired of taking care of it all...three days later, he was gone.

Well, true enough, Mother and I didn't keep the yard in pristine condition. Hell, the "yardman" burned up a brand new $400 mower, as he didn't realize you needed to mix the oil and gas. Duh....

And when you have to work three jobs just to keep the roof over your head, a disabled mother; there was just more important things on my mind vs. Mrs. Andy George's concerns about "yardwork".

The assault has not ceased. When the city's electric company sent a surge through our line into the house, causing a house fire, did she call us? No, but she did call one of our other neighbor's to let them know. Did she call the fire department? No! Our neighbor did. A week or so later, the city came and replaced the faulty light pole that had broken in the back yard.

When the neighbors on the opposite side of us sold the house, and the new neighbors moved in, we knew we would have more trouble as Mrs. Andy George made them her new best friends as she had so many of the others.

When the George's held a 50 year high school reunion party at their home, they both would lead their guests to the edge of their yard, telling them of their woes, having us as neighbors. Folks this is about our yard...not that we were filthy, loud and rude neighbors.

I hold two Master Gardener certifications from both Mississippi and Arkansas, a member of the state Landscape Critic's Council and certification with the National Backyard Wildlife Habitat Program.

"You need to cut down some of those trees," she would say.

Of course two of those trees, a fig and a quince, my parents allowed her to plant, as she didn't have the room in her yard.

Just a cruel old bitch. is what I say.