Neighbor Blues

I haven't had the best luck with neighbors. My land and the adjoining lot was owned by a brother and his brother in law. Both great guys but it was family, a road separated both the properties and the division lines were a bit blurry. The brother in law sold out to a bureaucrat who had worked for the county. He eventually joined the water board, liked to throw his weight around.

The guy immediately claimed possession of the road and fenced me out. I could have fought it with prescriptive right but decided to chill, wasn't worth the trouble. But then one day I noticed that about fifteen of my orange trees were dying. He had come onto our property, capped the pipes to them and never told us. Can you imagine?

I confronted him and he said that it was his right, the pipe was on his land. I told him that it appeared he liked to throw his elbows around and that is not how we do things in the country. We basically never had another civil word for the next twenty years or more. I avoided the son of a bitch like the plague.

Had a bible banger on the other side, he called the county and fire on me on a couple of occasions, when they moved out they found his extensive porn collection in the attic. Very cool.

Anyway, the neighbor who cut off my water recently sold to a retired lady cop from Lompoc. I have never met her but my wife has and she says she was very nice. I guess she wanted to get on some anti marijuana strike force here. Cool. She has horses and is putting a lot of work in the place.

But she has five great pyrenees size type or larger dogs that never shut up. It is constant. All night and we can't walk on our own property during the day without getting barked at. I don't know if she is that oblivious, probably just doesn't care about anybody but herself.

The other day we had to shut our water off after a break and my friend Tom went up to the valve at the top of our property next to the fence. One of her large dogs put his head through the fence and grabbed Tom's elbow, would not let go. Tore right through his jacket, ruined it. Luckily he wasn't hurt.

She came down and apologized after the commotion, he showed her the damage. She never even offered to replace his jacket, nothing. Yesterday she installed a higher chain link fence.

I don't have real high hopes for our relationship.

*

My neighbor down the way had a new neighbor pleasantly introduce themselves last week, get a tour of his house and then hand him a legal document demanding easement rights to his property with all sorts of threats if he did not acquiesce.

What the heck is wrong with people? Fallbrook never used to be like this. Too many people moving from the cities or Lompoc or Orange County that don't know how to behave, speed up on rural dirt roads and treat their neighbors like crap. Was never the old Fallbrook way.