No Fences Make for Good or Bad Neighbors, Depending

Chris' post over at Diametral Pitch about his neighbor put me in mind of our neighbor and all the fun we've had with him for the past several years. Now you get to hear about it, too.

We've actually been blessed with mostly fantastic neighbors. On our left is Father John (a Greek Orthodox priest--the house is full of beautiful icons) and his family, with kids about the boys' age. They're very friendly and generally great folks. On our right is Dennis, a firefighter and really nice guy who has helped out with various things; he organized a neighborhood barbeque, gave us the wood from the trees he cleared, and helped ensure our houses weren't burned down in the Old Fire.

And then there's Tony.

Tony owns the land below ours. I have to admit, about 62% of why I bought the house was the view--we live at the edge of the National Forest, and there's nothing below us but about six thousand feet of hillside. From our property, you can see most of the Inland Empire spread out below (when the smog layer is thin enough, anyway).

We have no driveway, but an access road runs below all our houses. And we knew that someone owned the lots below, but from what we understood, they weren't buildable because they're too far removed from the road.

We were right. Tony, however, doesn't care.

We first met him when he buldozed the access road. He cut off the bottom of our driveway to the point that I could charge extreme sports participants a fee to drive down it. The man has no permits and couldn't get them if he bribed all the officials on the mountain. The access road is at too severe an angle to be used as a fire road; no building he could construct would be close enough to a sewer line or hydrant to be legal. Even knowing he isn't allowed to build, he's dragged tons of material down to the lot. Literally, tons. There are half a dozen pallets of full-sized logs sitting down there, beckoning my children to play amongst their unwieldy mess and serving as perfect wildfire platforms. Because they're illegal to have on his lot, he's hidden them down in the trees and thrown green tarps over them. His beat-up 60's-era trailer is rusting away down there (it used to be on our driveway before Father John pushed it down the hill--he's a good man to have on hand), as is the old Suzuki Samurai that hasn't moved since we got here three years ago. Old tents and crates litter the lot, all destroyed because he leaves them for months through all the weather.

The fun goes on from there, but I won't drag you through it. We might be able to take some of it, but he's also personally obnoxious (I don't know if he's professionally obnoxious as well, but I'd guess so). He's tried to intimidate all of us into letting him do whatever he wants, and he sometimes acts as though he's going to be reasonable, then does something insanely inappropriate the next week. Let's put it this way: Joanna has only yelled at another person twice in her adult life, and both times it's been him.

I'll leave off now. We've finally gotten the proper authorities lined up for when he makes his next bizarre move. It's odd, though--it's been a struggle to figure out how to respond to the guy. A part of me wants to just say "live and let live; let's be nice neighbors." And if he were doing things legally, or even safely, I probably would. I'm not positive what the proper Christian response to his antics is. But when the construction equipment roars up my drive and dangerous materials are left strewn about the woodlands in preparation for building dangerous structures, I feel like something has to be done.

No one blocks my view.