The street on which I live is fairly isolated, being up a hill and two streets away from any major road, so it’s pretty peaceful and quiet. That is, except for when [Neighbor] decides to break that peace.
[Neighbor] is an older woman, probably in her late sixties by now, who lives alone with only her parrot. She is overall a very sweet woman, with one exception: she is absolutely convinced that the street in front of her house belongs exclusively to her, and no attempts to persuade her otherwise have ever worked. This is a stretch of curb that can fit two regular-sized vehicles with room to spare. She’s lived across the street for roughly fifteen years, and in that time she has made many… “creative”… attempts to block off the street, none of which have ever worked for long. Here are some of her best and/or craziest attempts.
Number One: Every week, we move our garbage bins down to the curb for collection. City bylaws allow for them to be on the sidewalk or in the right-of-way, as long as they don’t block traffic. The law also requires that these be at the curb for no more than twenty-four hours before and twenty-four hours after collection.
Every week, she will place all three of her bins (garbage, recycling, and yard waste) on the street, regardless of whether it’s collection week for the latter two or not, and she will spread them out so they occupy as much space as possible. She will leave them there as long as possible until someone finally moves them into her driveway and takes the parking spots.
Number Two: She once parked her own vehicle on that stretch of the curb and then refused to move it because “it’s broken and needs repairs”. Keep in mind, she has a two-car garage and two-car driveway that she regularly uses. She only moved the car when the County issued a warning for failure to move after seventy-two hours, which is the county ordinance.
Number Three: She had her boyfriend — she’s had a lot of those, usually men twenty to thirty years her junior — bring cones and yellow tape, and together they flagged the area off as inaccessible. This lasted all of a couple of hours before a couple of neighbors and I went and tore it down. We tossed the cones in her driveway and the tape in her trash without comment.
Number Four: Whenever she has old broken furniture, such as cabinets, chairs, tables, etc., she will place them in the middle of that section for as long as she can get away with. Usually, it’s no more than a day before someone takes it — we’re in a nice neighborhood, so I assume they’re driving it the five minutes to the dump — or, directed by the neighbor they’re visiting, someone runs it over.
Number Five: Whenever someone parks in front of her house, she watches them like a hawk to see if they violate any code rules, and if they do, she pounces on the phone (I’m pretty sure she still has a corded landline) to call the city. A few days ago, she spent around nine hours watching a truck because it had a trailer attached, and city rules say you can’t park trailers roadside without trucks.
Another time, she called city enforcement so many times in one day to report people parking there for a Fourth of July party that they told her to stop calling. There were technically tiny issues like “too far from the curb” and “hitch overhanging her driveway by like an inch”, but that was it.
This one occurred just today, and it is what convinced me to finally submit this compilation.
Number Six: She calls the police at least once a month if she’s feeling particularly old and cranky, and that day was today. Roughly half an hour ago, a [City] police unit showed up to speak to her. I couldn’t hear their conversation, but she was pointing at the SUV parked in front of her house and waving her hands, clearly upset about the audacity of someone using the street to park. The conversation lasted for around ten minutes before [City] police left, and the vehicle remains parked.
As I said before, she’s actually a very nice woman, but for some reason, she has an obsession with that particular space.
