Neighbors
 

I was driving along a country road in Monson, MA. There were 6 or 8 McMansions on either side of the road, fairly new, pretty expensive.
Then there was a small mid-1800s cemetery on the left with an open field on the right, followed by this scene.

Obviously this guy is not a happy camper and his house is a little older but that doesn't mean he was there first. He could have bought it after the newer houses were built. It remains a puzzle.

A couple people on this board have mentioned having neighbor problems before. Do you get along with your neighbors? Peacefully coexist or friends?

We've always gotten along with our neighbors, but don't interact a whole ton. Though we own our home, the neighborhood is about 50/50 renters and owners, and the renters usually leave after a one-year lease.

Funny thing though, every single neighbor that came by to say hello while we were moving in had the same conversation-starter: how happy they were that the crazy old lady had finally left the neighborhood.

Before we were married, my husband and his two roommates used to have an older male neighbor who would mow their lawn for them every two weeks uninvited, and the only thing he ever asked in return was that they and their friends not park in front of his house. He was a nice guy, I always made sure everyone remembered the parking rule.

People across the street: good earnest folk, dude is ex-Navy, wife is too highly strung, we get on well.

People to the right: nice introductions, the woman broke down in tears at us on the day we moved in because she was losing her best neighbor. She got divorced months after I did and I became less anti-social and we are now more friendly. No not in that way.

People to the left: pretty much keep to themselves, professional family, but they appear not to outright dislike me. They didn't know for six months when Bean died and I think it would take about that long for them to realize if I died, as long as someone cut the grass.

People behind: woman seems half-decent, first time I went to introduce myself to the guy he gave a gruff grunt and turned away. I suspect they don't like it that my dog can poo wherever in the back yard and I don't clean it up. Hey, the poos are tiny, and I don't let her in their yard...

We've moved to a new neighbourhood recently as most of you probably know and the neighbours seem pretty good. We've met most of them and they've been pretty welcoming.

We've only had one run in and that was between the kids on the street and was sorted out fairly quickly.

The lady next door lives there with her teenage daughter. They seem to go between loving each other to death and hating each others guts. Sometimes they fight a lot. The ones across the street and down one have had the cops over there on about 4 occasions because they've been belting the shit out of each other. The ones on the other side of us just recently cleaned out the garage and gave my boys each a bike which they're very happy with, although they already had perfectly good bikes. Two doors down the other way there''s a bunch of islanders who sometimes have rowdy afternoon early evening parties, but the music is worth the disturbance. Across the road and to the left there are three old timer residences and they're all very quiet and enjoy mowing their lawns every other day...even though it doesn't rain and the grass doesn't grow.

I think we've got pretty good neighbours. I hope they all think the same of us.

XOB, you sob, you were in Monson and didn't pay us a call? you were only an hour away!

neighbors to the left, neighbors to the right, into the valley of death rode the six hundred...

I'm cool with all my neighbors, a couple of whom we have an open door policy. i.e. out of butter? just walk into the house and open the fridge. Other neighbor, who have psychological problems which manifest as them thinking I want their dog's shit on my lawn, we have a cool detent at best.

Family next door are good neighbors. We aren't close friends, but their daughters babysit for us. We watch out for each other. Twice when they've been on vacation, I've had to go over to their house and fix big stuff that's been broken. (We have each other's keys.) Once, it was a flooded basement when all the basements in the area were flooding, and the other time the house sitter came over for help when a kitchen circuit shorted. We built a wooden fence on our common property line together, to keep in their dogs and give us each a little privacy, but it's only 5 feet tall, so we can talk over it. Only thing that bugs me about them is that one of their three dogs barks at me whenever I'm in my own back yard. But that's not a big deal.

On the other side are a couple of kooky old sisters, and their best friend (male) moved in across the street. They are nice enough people, but we don't interact too much. The guy across the street is a bit of a junk hound hoarder, his house is packed and it's now spilling out into the side yard and front porch. He recently had a junk car (not even a nice project car, a real POS) towed into his driveway. It just sits there. Nobody ever works on it. He bugs me a little. I miss the folks who lived there before.

Next to him is a quiet single guy. Works in IT. Is never home. Tore down the little old house that was on the lot and built a McMansion. Drives a few different (company?) cars. Mercedes, Porche, Range Rover, etc. Different car every week. I've spoken to him maybe three times. Probably said a dozen words total to him in the last three years. Nice enough guy, but our paths never cross. He recently has had a lady visitor stay over a lot, which is good for him. He looked lonely before in that HUGE house all by himself.

Renters across the street next to the junk guy. The landlord does a good job keeping the place filled with decent young folks. Worst complaint I have is that there are a lot of cars on the street. Not bad at all. But don't know the current batch.

Behind us are other renters. It's vacant now. Guy's asking $3200 a month, which is insane even for this overpriced area.

Pretty good neighborhood overall. We shut the street down once a year for a block party. Lots of kids around here. Not close friends with the immediate neighbors, but lots of friends in the neighborhood.

At our old house the neighbours dogs used to bark at us when we went in the yard, so I started hosing them each time they did it. They soon learned their lesson.

The neighbours knew I was hosing their dogs. They understood the purpose.

This is my #1 complaint in this town -- but not because of "bad" neighbors, they just aren't friendly.

We've been here 5 years, we've had yard sales, have hosted two block parties (annual Night Out that is nation wide, police and fire depts come by) and still have only a nodding acquaintance with the people who live closest to us. The people we know the best are 10 houses away or so.

No one welcomed us to the neighborhood and when we had the first yard sale, it was all about how we don't keep the yard as neat as the last people. Yeah, well they were retired and we have 3 young kids! It's a tad more difficult for us than it was for them.

One of our dumpier neighbors just moved out and the house finally sold. We took the iniative and introduced ourselves, but I doubt anyone else in the neighborhood will. For one thing, we seem to have too many language barriers in our neighborhood.

People seem to really congregate based on ethnicity and don't seem too willing to go outside that circle. Too bad, really, because there are so few of us with same age children. It would be nice if our kids could play together.

Not like when I was growing up and the whole neighborhood watched out for all of us kids . . .

So far, though, no problems. Fingers crossed!!

The neighbours knew I was hosing their dogs

HE HE she said HOSING !!!!!

What else could I say? Is there another word to describe wetting someone's dogs with water from the garden hose?

wetting someone's dogs!!??!!??


sorry its a Bevis and Butthead thing !!!!

Not a program I ever watch.

Sorry Ali , I couldn't resist !!!!
Neighbors , well I have had good ones and bad ones , the worst I ran back over the fence we shared with a shot gun , the beter ones I apprecheate and help when I can , we have some pretty good neihbors right now but the house behind us has changed hands 4-5 times in the 10 years we have lived here , nice folks liveing there now

We moved to Georgia about 5 years ago from the West Coast and we LOVE it! The people are friendly.

In CA when we first married, we became friendly with the landlord's brother who lived next door. The landlord and Owen were our ONLY neighbors for several miles in any direction (farmland). Owen was about 85 years old. Every summer I would help him pick watermelons. The year we moved to Washington state, I flew down to help him pick watermelons that summer. We had three days and went into the fields 4 times. I carried about 30-35 melons that averaged 35# each time for a total of approx. 140 melons totalling approx. 4500 +/- pounds! Owen liked to give them away to people he knew. He gave me 10, which I then gave to friends I had known and was visiting while there, and I took about 5 to my Mother's house for her to give away!

Our neighbors here in Georgia are very diverse, but no children. Some have professional careers, most are blue collar workers and some are retired. There is only ONE house in the neighborhood no one is friendly with, he is an older alcoholic and lets druggie people (relatives?) stay and deal from his home. There have been many 'busts' at that house, including a man who walked into our garage and stole our weedeater (prob. to pawn for drug $). Theft to arrest in under 45 minutes, it was like an episode of "Cops".

We have house keys exchanged with several of our neighbors and Hubby fixed one neighbor's burst water pipe one freezing morning a few years ago. We sometimes have the neighbors over for summmer BBQs. Everyone is relaxed and comfortable with each other.

Where were you? I don't remember you asking permission to leave NY?

I went to Monson to check out Echo Hill Orchards. When I was a kid they could make a living from apples, but times change, so they have a DoDad gift shop with candles, baskets, seasonal stuff, jams, pumpkin butter and the like.

Actually I went to check out their line of fruit based wines. Nine different varieties, white and red, plus hard cider.
The corks are like a vinyl sleeve filled with high density foam. No way I could get it back in the bottle. :headshake

My close next door neighbors are nice and we're good friends. The house the live in is actually owned by my nanny and they rent from her. Its a mother and her (now) teen daughter...they moved in when the daughter was in k-garten and my sis and I babysat her. The mother has been my ride to school and from. The girl is a bit spoiled, and they own way too many pets IMO...but overall pretty great.
We used to have a trailer on the other side and a sweet but very poor older lady who lived there. Its about a two acre lot and her sons raised fighting chickens, which they would fight and burn the carcasses. ICK! The people who bought the lot after she moved tore down the trailer and we had a bad problem with roaches for awhile. The place was disgusting. They started building a house but they had some problems and left the place...their emu escaped and we were unable to catch it...poor thing probably froze. The next people had problems and practically abandoned their dogs a nice rotreiler(sp?) and a mean dalmation which was chained up. We ended up taking food and water over for them and when it snowed, the dalmation was so miserable it allowed us to bring it over and pin it up until the owner came for it (the rot was already gone).
Some other people come and gone (apparently this town has some strict building codes ect.)
The neighbors after, had a pitbull mix puppy which was lonely and would come over and play with our black lab. But he became a problem when one of our little dogs went into heat. The man who owned the place didn't speak much english and we don't speak much spanish so we had to work through the daughter. I'm not sure if its the same ppl who own it or not but the people who live there seem nice. There are about 5 young girls (I think two related families live there) and they like our dogs and play w/ through the fence...our dogs probably go over there. Our dogs don't respect the barrier of a fence.
We're probably not the best neighbors...our black lab fathered some pups before he got fixed and the lady behind us threatend to shoot him if he kept eating her cat food...our dogs bark alot...so do the neighbors' though. We'll take your dog to the SPCA if you're mistreating it or bother you about it if its bothering us. But no major problems tho. We've known some good people and some not so good.

We've been here since July, and have yet to do more than nod and smile at the neighbors on either side. I don't blame them, we're weird, and I'm sure a hell of lot more active than the previous owner of the place.

We have lived in the same house for over 5 years now, bought it new in a subdivision. All of our neighbors are nice enough, my wife likes to be friends, my thoughts are - I didn't move here to make friends, I moved here because I liked the house, so just smile and wave and leave me alone. Of course the neighbor on one side always has everyone over for BBQ's or other stuff so my wife makes me go. I would rather go out and play with my kids.

I have the perfect neighbours. Friendly and polite, will always keep an eye on things if one of us goes away.....chit chat if we happen to come across each other in the (shared) gardens, occassionally loan each other books.....but keep out of each others' business and don't feel the need to be in and out of each others houses. I've been in Joan's house twice in the two years I've been here and she's been in mine once. I do however have two of her books and she is busy reading a couple of mine (which will then no doubt find their way around a bunch of other people, which is great).

We've been in our house for about ten years. The neighborhood was new in the mid-fifties, and since we've moved in, four homes owned by original owners (older folks) have chenged hands due to death or moving into "The Home". The last original husband died a few weeks ago - we don't know what the widow will do.
We're on a corner - on the "busy street" side we're very close to the single lady next door, but don't know the folks across the street. We used to be close with 5 families on the side street, four of whom have moved away. We had block parties, and would get together for drinks most weekends. At one point, there were 14 kids under 10 years old on our block. The street was usually crowded with playing kids. One of the wives was the quintessential princess-bitch. She thought she was still a cheerleader in highschool - real cliquey. The other folks were all nice.

We just moved into our house in July, so don't know the neighbors well. Next door is an elderly woman who introduced herself when we were unloading our truck and the neighbor whose backyard abuts ours came around to say hello. Other than that, we wave and say good day if we should pass any of the other neighbors.

Directly across the street is a yuppie couple, no children. She works long, long hours (up and gone before dawn and home after dark) and he works non-existent hours. He spends his spare time (and there's a lot of it) in the garage puttering while playing classical music on the stereo.

To their right is the mansion of the subdivision, a humongous colonial with two story columns, pool, Lexus and Range Rover. A young couple with several children live there, but none have ventured out to meet my children. They have a lot of kids visiting and pool parties.

Across and left, the home doesn't actually front on our street. They sometimes take walks and appear to have a child about 5, a toddler and the Mrs. is pregnant. They often have noisy backyard get-togethers until the wee hours of the morning.

The really interesting (ie: weird) neighbors are on our left. The house is a two story, mustard colored, spanish style home 80-90 yrs old. It is surrounded by trees and shrubbery, literally a fence of trees and hedges. Everything is extremely unkempt, dank and dark. My family has an ongoing debate as to whether there are two elderly men who live there or a man and a masculine-looking woman. Twice, I saw the debatable character out in the yard, apparently shirtless. But it's very difficult to tell through all the foliage. They drink and then fight like cats and dogs. One has a very high pitched voice and shrieks obscenities. There is a lot of crashing and banging. They only work on the yard late at night. I have no idea how they manage not to cut off a foot, out there mowing and weed whacking at midnight.

Stormie

My good neighbor, (the one we swap keys with) retired army nurse and her quiet and sweet dog are moving out. We have had a rash of robberies and she says she no longer feels safe. Her church has also undergone some major transition and she's feeling disconnected. She's moving up north to a small town. Crime is up, but I dont feel that threatened, ...yet. It's a city. She's the last of the "grandma houses" on the street. I have no doubt it will become more rental property, as are all the other houses surrounding us.

We'll hang on. build up our own folliage fences.

To the north of me is the tooth mans office, south is my old house, empty. To the west is courthouse and jail. East is empty lot. So I get along great with my neighbors. :bolt:

I've lived in my neighborhood for about a year and a half. It's not the best neighborhood in town, but I love my house. My neighborhood is between two of the less desireable parts of town, Stabtown and Crackville. Despite the through trafffic, it's pretty quiet, with older homes and people that have lived there forever. Most of the people at the end of the block are all related. The rest of the people I don't know. My neighbors across the street are nosy and have a messy yard, but they are nice.

When we moved in, people kept stopping by and asking for money. Apparently, we had the reputation for being rich. I think people quickly learned otherwise.

WE get along fine with our neighbors, although we tend not to do too much with the ones with small kids as we are past that stage.

Talk about a bad neighbor experience, I think I can beat most with this family story. In 1952 my mother's sister moved back to the family farm in Minnesota with her husband and 3 sons, she was pregnant with the 4th. Her husband was between jobs and our grandparents had invited them to live there until the job started up,

A reclusive man who lived next to grandpa's farm had no trespassing signs everywhere, it was rumored he had a still for home made brew. Anyway he shot one of the family's dogs because it trespassed on his land! My uncle Bill went over to pick bring the dog back and the man stepped out of his front door and shot him right through the head. Funny thing was uncle Bill was decorated war veteran who had served behine enemy lines in Burma in the OSS, and had also been shot down twice and survived; now he was dead. He left a wife and 4 sons between the age of 5 and 0 (the one in the oven, so to say). To make matters worse the guy who killed him managed to surrender all his life savings and ownership of his farm to his parents so my aunt would not get any. :mad:

I don't have to leave ny, though I occasionally get a weekend pass to Tanglewood. For example, if Mass were "a map of tasmania" and the left hip socket was Bennington, VT, and the right hip socket was Albany, NY, we'd be right there on the navel, putting Monson down there in the map of Tassie...:blush:

I finally got to meet my upstairs neighbors' baby, who's about 6 months old now. I wasn't even aware they HAD a baby until maybe a couple of months ago, when I heard some faint crying in the middle of the night. He must be a pretty quiet little guy, lucky parents.

It seems the most common problems with neighbors are pets, yours or theirs, and different opinions on what a yard/exterior should look like.

I grew up in a small New England town where everyone not only knew everyone else, they knew what you drove, where you worked, all your kids and your bad* habits.

In todays hectic, electronic, commuting, lifestyles, we know people around the world better than people around the block. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I mean how many of LabRat's neighbors have seen her butt? :lol:


* subjective