I can picture it now..my neighbor walks up to me in my yard as I'm getting ready to get into my truck. His walk has an oddly familiar swagger that reminds me of my grade school principal. He is wearing olive drab cargo pants over desert tan colored jungle boots. He has a neat appearance, hair shaved tight on the sides. His mustache looks like it was just waxed and combed.
Looking at me through dark sunglasses he says, "I've got a problem with how you have been mistreating my mother. That fence..you know along the back 40..it's got to be moved right away!"
I glance down at his waist and notice his hand casually resting on the well worn butt of Springfield XD .45 tactical handgun. He follows up by saying, "maybe we could walk back there to take a look..me and you..I've already got my tractor warmed up." It was more of a statement than a question.
We look at each other momentarily and although I cannot see his eyes behind the black sunglasses, I notice his gaze shift to the inside of the cab of my truck before returning his focus quickly back to me as if sizing me up. I look away nervously as he takes a step backwards. His hand still resting on his gun.
I quickly think about how odd it is that he is not even trying to hide his obvious suspicions that I'm going reach for a weapon at any moment to attack him.
Neither of us say a word leaving an uncomfortable break in the one sided conversation.
I reply, "I'm actually kind of busy right now, I've got horses to feed." To which he instantly asks where I was headed to in my truck.
"I'm headed to Bible Study" I tell him. "So your going to church? Which church are you going to? I thought you had to feed your horses?" He asks.
"Well it's the one on 5th and West, but I have to stop by the feed store" , I reply somewhat annoyed that he's asking so many questions. He stares at me again behind his sunglasses. There is another uncomfortable moment of silence. He is clearly trying to figure out if I was telling the truth.
I ask him if he's a cop or something and he responds, "I'm the one here asking questions."
"Whatever man!" as I turn to get into my truck. Before I could get both legs in, I feel a heavy hand tightly grip my shoulder which makes me instantly tense up.
"STOP RESISTING!! STOP RESISTING !!", he starts screaming into my ear.
I reach into the glove box to get my phone.."DON'T MOVE!" He yells. "I'M GOING TO NEED BACKUP!! As if talking to someone else.
"Don't reach for a thing", now in a calmer voice. He's drawn his pistol, which is now solidly pointed directly at my face. A few seconds tick by. The muzzle suddenly starts shaking and he slowly lowers the gun and holsters it into his Kydex holster. He looks as if he just woke up from a dream. "I'm sorry man", he says quietly. "Just move that fence".
He turns and quickly walks away, getting into his black Dodge Hell Cat which roars to life as he turns around, spinning the wheels with each change in direction. The car quickly disappears down the driveway in a cloud of dust. Only the bright taillights are barely visible as he turns onto the highway...tires faintly squealing with each shift.
I sit there trying to digest what just happened. It had gone from a normal day, to having a gun pointed at me, to sitting in a warm wet puddle which was slowly soaking into the bench seat of my pick up truck, all in less than 5 minutes!!
"That guy has some serious issues", I say out loud shaking my head.
It was not 6 months ago his elderly mother asked me if I could graze some animals on her land. She had said she was terrified of a wildfire.
Knowing she was a widow, I had obliged and even spent several of my weekends taking my fence down and moving it to the edge of the woods to keep the horses out of her yard. I didn't even think to charge her.
Suddenly I remember her telling me one of her boys was retiring from the Chicago Police Department and that he was moving back home to take care of her. That's the last time I do them a favor, I think to myself as I head back into to the house to change my overalls.
As I step into the house I hear momma humming softly to the radio. "You won't believe what just happened! We'll do ya wanna know or not dammit?" She turns to look and says "what did you do THIS time Henry?
"Well remember that boy of Maribelle's..the good looking one? Well he showed me his gun today. Hold on...is that Dueling Banjos on the radio? Turn that up will ya?"
I settled into my recliner chain and started rocking to the music. "Momma fetch me a beer would ya?"
Truthfully it was just another day in backwoods NW Arkansas. I had forgotten why I came in the house much less the neighborly words I had earlier.
(Excuse the poor grammar and obviously it's all in good humor).
Actually the funny part is I don’t have a Dodge HellCat, but have a ‘72 Chevy shortwide with a balanced, and mean 400 small block mated to a 700r4 w/OD, and 3.25 gears. We’ve had to do a hell of a lot of modifications to the suspension, and motor mounts. Before the suspension was worked on you couldn’t keep it in a straight line during a drag race, and got that part fixed, and noticed that the when doing a wheel stand it snapped a motor mount. So I put a new mount in thinking that would fix the problem(thought it was because I came down hard), it didn’t fix it. Everytime we took off in it, one side or the other would break off. So we had to put torque chains on it.
I’m from the country, and believe you can still have a bad news truck that is built to also haul with. I can haul what my 3/4 ton does, and don’t get hot because the dual fans, and aluminum radiator. I don’t care about getting it dirty either. I’m not the type to have trailer queens. I want something I can drive, haul with, and still haul butt in it. Anyways, that story was pretty funny. My moms not that old, and I’m not that dang old[emoji23] the lesbo liberal neighbors are older than me. They do have a farm hand who’s a convicted felon that knows me pretty well. I plan on being nice about it when I talk to them, moms actually way madder than I am about it. I was going to be nice, and at least hook a chain around their round bale, and pull it out of the ditch, but it’s a hell of a drop off the edge of the road, and would hate to roll my new tractor, whenever they’ve got a skid steer they haul round bales with that they could come from their side(our side technically), and get it a lot easier, and safer because it’s flat on their side.
Moms really kicking herself in the rear for trying to be a good neighbor. I guess she thought the daughter was going to be like her mom was when her mom lived over there, and keep to herself, and call, and check on mom after dad got killed. Her daughter is the complete opposite, they ride the fine line between illegally and inhumanly treating the horses, because 12 horses on 9 acres is way too many horses for that little of property when you consider most of its wooded. One of the main things that pisses mom off is the fact she couldn’t wrap around her mind why her creek wasn’t running, and she’s never walked on the back side of our property, and never knew there was a fresh water spring up there, she just assumed it was a creek that ran through her property, and was just runoff. I had to explain to her that when you live on the very top of a mountain, 90% of the time you’re not going to have a creek that just flows down the mountain unless you’ve got a freshwater spring. Funny reason why she’s mad is their horses are crapping right in the water, and they’ve plugged up the creek bed with manure, mud, and other stuff. Mom grew up with a nasty artesian well, and to have a spring you can drink from that doesn’t smell like sulphur is something she’s never owned before, and I guess growing up having that to bathe in, and drink, I’d probably be pissed too, because most of us take for granted what we do have nowadays. Especially when it comes to the county we live in, the county assessor will post on her website the survey of your property marking all the boundaries, and even show the state, utility easements. So I’ve got the paper copy of the land surveyor, which the last time he did it I walked with him and showed him the stakes we had, and the places in between because their Theodolite couldn’t see through the thick foliage up here. So I would have to go out at a certain point, and hold out a rod for him to measure off of, them keep on going. Everywhere we went I placed a marker at so that way I’d know where the line was at. That was the point of the marker paint I bought today was to go to those markers I placed out on that side, and paint them. I really don’t see them getting too upset about it other than the fact they’ll have less land on our side which is flatter than on the other side of their property, but it’s more wooded on our side. They’ve not lived their long enough to know any of the property lines or even know the surveyors. We’ve been using the same company even when we lived in NW Arkansas, and now that we’ve moved to the mountains 20+ years ago it’s still the same guys. The owners son went to school with my dad, and uncle, and is now the owner since the old man passed away, and he does all the surveying on all my great uncles residential, and commercial properties here in this area. It’s sad when the surveyor still sends my grandma(dads mom), and my great uncle Christmas baskets. He’s way younger than both them, same age as dad, but his dad did all the surveying for them when they were younger, and the surveying for my great grandparents, and great great uncle who had a ton of property in all of this county. It was a different time back then, I’ve got a letter from my great great uncle to Pat the original owner, and my uncle traded him a coon hound he trained for 80 acres to be surveyed.
As I said I don’t see them getting hostile, but I do see the hired hand getting frustrated that they’ll have to move a lot of stuff. He’ll be mad, because (he’s a criminal thief), and is used to stealing other people’s property. We’ve caught him over here on one of the surveillance cameras in the driveway looking in the window of our ‘72 Chevy while we had it parked, and I had shop open with all my expensive Matco tools in there. Apparently he’s taught them the game of screwing the system too, because both those women are 300-350+ pounds, and I’ve seen one of them on a horse(felt sorry for the horse), they pretend to be a rescue shelter, but 1. Don’t have enough land for that many horses. 2. They feed them hay, and range cubes, because all our property is woods, 3. they fatten them up, and resale them. If the county animal control officer went to do a welfare check on them, they would see the amount of horses vs the little amount of property, and also the fact that they’ve done that to the spring, plus he would be asking them why their fence is so far over, because our county animal control walks the fences to make sure they’re in compliance, and the animal control officer would realize the discrepancies in land.
That’s one way to get rid of them darn things, and the fence is call animal control who would then call another shelter to come get them, along with ADEQ(Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality) who would come check out the amount of horse manure running next to a freshwater spring along with countless other violations. ADEQ takes the water in the area very seriously. Especially something like a freshwater spring. Apparently Arkansas is very particular about their environment, and ecosystem. I know this because when we went from well water to city, ADEQ came out, along with a University biologist, because apparently we have native plants behind the well house that are almost extinct in Arkansas. I always thought they were weeds, and when I’d brush hog I would just mow them down. They actually made us reroute the water line because of them darn flowers. If you ever go through Arkansas, and take I-49 between Mountainburg, and the tunnel, you’ll see the median in 3-4 spots about 50 yards long isn’t mowed in some sections because they have signs up that says Native Wildflower sanctuary.
