There’s no way to find out about your neighbors until after you’ve moved in, and then it’s just a little bit too late…you’re in.
So, you smile and assure yourself that it’s all gonna be fine.
But sometimes, it’s just NOT!

One of our many moves over the years wedged us between Dirty Harry who was a Hoarder, Bert ‘n Ernie a most unlikely pair, and a crazy lady across the street who was a fire-starter.
All on our little cul-de-sac, mind you.
I could honestly say WE were the most normal couple…now think about that one!

Harry was a sweet little old man whose house was built way before the rest of the houses on our street.
His wife was frail and bed-ridden so he pretty much stayed close to home and cared for her.
His grandson stopped by regularly to check on them and bring groceries.

Harry’s backyard was his outside-of-the-house world and before long, our nightmare.
He was a collector. I say collector because the term hoarder hadn’t come of age yet.
His years of collecting covered the entire area of his rather large back yard.
You’ve seen the kind of collecting I’m talkin’ about…old rusted-out crap good for nothing, but people like Harry hold tight to things like; a pile of rotting wood, rusted out car parts from cars that didn’t exist anymore, tires…lots and lots of tires, big water fountains broken in pieces lying on their sides, parts of tractors, beat-up sofas and chairs with springs sprouting out where cushions used to be, tables, chairs, bikes, an old plow without the horse, you name it and it was out there…way too much for the eyes to take in at one viewing.
It was one of those kind of backyards that if you can’t relate, can’t visualize, well… you’re the lucky one.
I’m sure at one time there were chickens, roosters, maybe a cow or two back there.
They were all gone now but we would soon discover there were other living things out there.
We saw all this junk before moving in as nothing more than an eyesore and a quick solution for us would just be to erect a big wood fence and well, out of sight, out of mind, right?

There was a little, used-to-be-white, wood fence that separated our yard from Harry’s. It wasn’t gonna keep our two dogs, Bartles & Jaymes in our yard and out of his, so we quickly had that tall redwood fence installed.
That worked for the dogs and our eyes; they couldn’t escape our yard and we couldn’t see any of the crap on the other side of the fence.
Problem solved, so we thought.

Our first winter as Harry’s neighbor introduced us to rats.
Rats………..in the garage…OUR garage!.
They were coming in through the garage doggie door. Clever rats but still rats.
It took a while for us to discover them but let me say here…the day we actually DID realize they were there well…that was a bad day in the garage.
They had made a nest underneath our dryer and had set up housekeeping.
They’d gone around the garage and found dog food from the big stored bags and had filled their rat pantry for the long winter ahead. Busy rats, but still rats.
We got ‘em out, my husband, my daughter and me but…..that’s another story!

We armed the garage with rat traps and hoped it was over. NOT!
Harry had a kind of home-made lean-to thing on our side of his house with loads of piles of wood, a rat haven.

The day we actually saw one coming under the fence from Harry’s to our yard was the last rat-day we could handle.
We caught Harry outside and mentioned the rat problem and that they were coming from his yard.
We asked him to get rid of the wood pile.
He smiled and said OK.
We waited but the wood never moved.
The rats kept comin’ in.
We asked grandson to handle the problem.
He said he would but he didn’t.
The rats kept comin’ in.
We once more asked Harry to clean up the back yard a bit to discourage the rats.
He smiled and said OK.
And yep, the rats kept scurrying around.
We became concerned that our very interested Schnauzers were gonna do what Schnauzers were bred to do and try to become rodent attack dogs and in the process get bit so…
We hired a Pesticide person to come in and get the rats.
She was awesome.
Yes, our rat-trapper was a woman.
She told me once she enjoyed trapping rats.
It made me wonder…what the heck was going on in her life that made her LIKE trapping rats?
She also advised us that we really needed to contact the Health Department people about the problem, so we did.
We first told Harry we were going to have to do that.
He smiled and said…..OK.
The Health Department did actually come and stopped by our house after their talk with Harry to tell us everything was good.
They told him to get rid of the entire lean-to thing as it was not code and he said…..
OK!
For the rest of the years that we lived next door to Harry the Hoarder, we kept the rat lady employed and happy and she kept the rats out of our garage.
And the lean-to? It never left.
The neighbors on the other side weren’t really named Bert and Ernie but, that’s what we dubbed them…in private of course, on our side of the fence. (wonder what they called us?)
It was my mother-in-law who called him Bert and she did that out loud and to his face.
She’d heard us call him that (in the house) and thought that was really his name.
“Hi Bert,” she’d call out to him from across the yard.
He never corrected her, neither did we.
It was too funny so we just let it go.

Bert’s wife’s name wasn’t Ernie. It was really Nola. Nosy Nola… really, really nosy Nola!

It was a small neighborhood and Nola was the source of information, if you know what I mean.
She was a nice woman but asked way too many questions and watched us too intently when we were out front so we planted fast growing, tall, privacy shrubs. Really, it didn’t matter. We spent most of our outside time in the back yard but that never stopped Nola.
Nola had an inquiring mind and inquiring minds need to know.

The two of them were doorbell ring-and-runners.

The first time it happened…when our doorbell rang and we went to the door, there was no one there but there WAS a grocery bag full of Camellia petals.
We didn’t get it. It didn’t click and we didn’t give it too much thought.

But the next time it happened, I was near enough to a window and looked out when the doorbell rang and actually saw Nola dashing across the yard and through the shrubs…and another bag full of Camellia petals was waiting for us on the porch.

Now we had to figure out why. We were just about to approach them and ask, WHAT THE HECK when we spotted the problem.
We had two Camellia bushes on the side of our house and as the flowers dropped from the bush, some of them dropped over onto their driveway.

Now, I guess there’s two trains of thought on this situation…theirs and ours.
The petals were from OUR bushes so it was OUR responsibility to go over to THEIR driveway and pick them up and… we could.
That was probably THEIR view.
Ours was…FOR CRAP SAKE, mention it to us, don’t bag ‘em then ring-and-run!

What we did was have the two Camellia bushes uprooted, transplanted in our back yard and up went a few more un-flowering privacy shrubs.

One time we caught Nosy Nola up on a ladder in her backyard, peering over at ours. What could we do? We waved…she waved back!
I’ll bet she even peeked through the knot holes in the redwood fence!
And, what was so interesting about us anyways?
Nothin’.
Although, I must admit, sometimes when we knew she was listening …..well, we had fun with that!
And, the hot tub at nighttime? Well, that’s another story!
But, the winner of that neighborhood was Annie the Arsonist.
Annie should NOT have been living as she was.
I was told by my source (Nosy Nola) that Annie was mentally unbalanced BIG TIME.
Her husband had divorced her, but took care of her financially.
She lived in the corner house all alone and more than a few suspicious fires had been started inside her house.
She didn’t have a car and THAT was a good thing but she had a bike.
Infact, I think she got her bike right off the set of The Wizard of Oz.
We’d pass her sometimes on the street in our car and I’d swear it was a scene from the movie.
Her head would be down and she’d be peddlin’ away and her poor dog sat in the front big basket, and I swear I heard her cackle as we passed by.

I don’t know what happened, well actually I DO know…nothing happened.

One day Annie was out in her yard which was across the street from me and all that happened was she looked over at me and I smiled and kinda waved.

The next day Nola came to tell me that Annie had knocked on her door that night and asked her if she’d like her to burn our house down!!!
Nola assured me that she impressed we were really good people and not to burn our house down.
That was comforting!
That’s the day our little house became loaded with smoke and fire alarms.
We lived side by side with Harold, Bert ‘n Ernie and Annie for enough years to fall in love with our area.

We eventually moved but whenever we came back, we’d always head over to our old neighborhood, park the car and just kinda look around and remember.

We heard that Harry’s wife died and he followed her not too long after and their house was sold.
From what we could see of the front yard, we decided the back was probably all cleared out and hopefully the lean-to and rats were a thing of the past.

We marveled at the Palm Tree we planted out front of our old house called 87.

We bought that tree when I’d accidentally driven by a “Deliverance” looking place out in the farmlands.
They had great looking Palm Trees in big buckets for dirt cheap, but I wasn’t gonna stop alone. I could hear the banjos playin’ if you know what I mean.

I went home and waited for my husband and we went back together.

For 3 or 4 years 87 would get dragged into the house in December and decorated with sea shells and lights and she was the most beautiful Christmas Tree.

We named her 87 ‘cause well, we found her in 1987. Is there a better reason?

One year we knew it was time for her to go into the ground so we planted her out front.
That same year we planted a very small Cedar Tree across the yard from 87 and we named him Sid.

Sid Cedar had grown taller than the house, 87 was as beautiful as ever and the tall shrubs were gone.

We saw Bert and Ernie walking from their car to their house.
I guess we could have honked and waved, even gone over and said hello but we got some sort of pleasure being the ones doing the spying this time instead of being spied on.

And on our way out, there was Annie.
We watched her get on her bike and head toward town.
She still gave me that scary feeling even though there was no way she could recognize us in sunglasses and a different car.
We drove past her and I looked out from the corner of my eyes.
So bad I wanted to roll down the window and stick out my tongue but………
well, not a good idea to fool with the wicked witch the west.