Bad Behavior Means You Play Second Fiddle

This happened to my mother’s family when she was a child, in the late ‘50s to early ‘60s, and they were moving into a new home that had previously been a rental. The previous tenants were not happy that the house was being sold and they were being forced to move.

They were still in the house on the day my mom’s family was to move in, claiming they weren’t allowed to move in for another week. When the furniture arrived, the tenants decided to mess with their stuff; they broke dishes and sprinkled crumbs into boxes of clothes and into their beds to attract rodents and bugs. They also called and harassed my grandparents almost daily about how they were moving in too soon. They weren’t; they’d been given the keys and told they could move in and the tenants had been given a date to be out by. The tenants were just generally rude and unpleasant during the entire situation.

When they left, they also left behind a violin which had supposedly been in their family for a while or something, so they came back and demanded the violin. My grandfather, who was not a pleasant man himself in those days and was sick to death of dealing with them, had only this as an answer:

“What violin?”

He slammed the door in their face and after a few more phone calls, they apparently gave up trying to get it back.

My mom eventually wound up with the violin and has it as a decorative antique in her living room.