We live in a moderately priced neighborhood. It's not the nicest neighborhood in town. Not the 2nd nicest. Not even close. Prior to the real estate implosion, houses were going for $200,000 or so, well below the median price nationwide. Nowadays, I'd say they're going in the $150,000 to $160,000 range. Still very affordable to most people. Really, if you have $50,000 household income and can come up with the down-payment, you should be able to live in this neighborhood.
Like most nicer communities in Ohio, our property taxes are what I would consider high. Maybe $4,000 or so in our neighborhood, per year.
Still, I like it here. More expensive neighborhoods have fewer young children, and I like that my son has kids his age he can walk to visit. I enjoy having kids playing in the backyard. Even when we had crackhead neighbors, the downside of living near a big family that was constantly in your backyard was easily outweighed by the times they could play with my boy. Granted, in the case of these particular crackheads, the number of times their kids could play with other kids without injuring them wasn't so hot, but hey.
This neighborhood is also older. Most of the houses were built just prior to 1970. If you say "Grove Bel", a lot of folks in this area know exactly what you're talking about. They either lived here once, or knew somebody who did. Some of us are only here on our way to bigger and better houses. Some of us are here for good. It's just a good situation for everybody since we don't have to go broke to make our mortgage payments and it's a nice, safe neighborhood.
Most of the neighbors are just good folks. They'll help you if you need a hand. Like most neighborhoods, we don't know most of our neighbors, but the few we've met were friendly enough. If we made more of an effort to meet folks, we'd know more folks. In that respect, it's like neighborhoods everywhere.
Now, directly behind my house is the house of an older couple. They're retired. They're also the neighborhood's resident cranky old people.
Not that the kids have been particularly good around them. Once we had to punish our kids (yes, Logan, too) for climbing their TV tower and getting up on their roof.
Today, apparently, the kids were on a different neighbor's trampoline (which is basically a baited bone-snapping trap) and playing with balls of some sort. Two of the balls ended up in the cranky neighbor's yard.
The kids climbed the short fence to get the balls and one way or another, the neighbor came out, bitched them out and if my son is to be believed, said that if he ever saw them in his yard again, he'd kick their ass.
I can see where he's coming from on this one. I'm a person who thrives on courtesy and respect. I also can easily see how kids throwing balls into his backyard and climbing his fence could piss a guy right off.
Threatening to kick 8 year olds' asses, though? I'm tempted to call the police on that, since it's clearly a threat of bodily harm. It'd be no different than me walking over and telling him that if he threatens one more kid, I'll stomp the life out of his worthless old carcass.
I guess more than anything, I'm disappointed. I see where the guy is coming from. He's retired. He raised his own kids. He's probably thinking somewhere in there that back when dinosaurs roamed the planet and he had little kids, they never did anything bad, ever, and that they certainly never did anything so evil as climbing a neighbor's fence.
(The fences here are very short. About two and a half feet tall. They're split rail with chicken wire. And for the most part, they're rotting and falling down.)
However, the reality is that this is a neighborhood with a lot of young families and a lot of little kids running around. You have to make some allowances in a neighborhood like this. I mean, you don't threaten to kick a kid's ass if, for instance, you come home and he's playing basketball on the hoop in your backyard. (That's happened before... with the crackheads.)
That's what's disappointing to me. That he countered what is obviously a case of kids encroaching on his property with some rather objectionable language and a threat that was completely out of proportion to the offense.
If kids really annoy you that much, seriously, it's time to move into a condo and realize that you can't expect the entire universe to bend over backwards for you.
This is extra disappointing because Logan loved the elderly man who used to live next door: Herb. He also seemed to like the cranky bastard directly behind us until this chain of events transpired. He respects adults and loves the elderly.
This cranky old dingbat will erode both of those feelings, I hope not by much, but probably by some.
All in all, I think it's just best to warn the kids that they need to keep balls out of this guy's yard. If they get in there, they have to chalk it up that they're gone forever. The cranky old guy did get the balls and throw them out of his yard. However, he impresses me as the kind of guy who will probably just start throwing them away if he finds them back there.
For a lot of reasons, Logan will probably be living in this house, at least part of the year, until he graduates from High School and leaves. With longevity being what it is, this cranky old bastard will probably be here the entire time, too. He'll continue to linger on in his miserable old crankiness, doing his best to make sure that anybody he encounters is equally miserable, even if only for a moment.
Personally, I can relate a little bit to this cranky old guy. Living in the suburbs isn't my idea of ideal, either. If I had my way, I'd live out in the country, probably for the same reason this guy should: so I wouldn't have to deal with obnoxious neighbors. There's just no getting around that in the burbs. If you're easily annoyed, you're either pissed off that kids are tearing up your lawn, or you're pissed off that the cranky old bastard in the neighborhood is scaring the kids.
For as long as I live here, though, I figure I need to be civil, to give a lot and to tolerate a lot because that's how it goes in the burbs. If it gets to the point that I'm getting all worked up about kids setting foot in my yard, that will be all the indication I need that it is time to live somewhere else.
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