love thy neighbor?

Look, I'm the last person to judge the appearance of someone's house. After all, I live in a ramshackle 70's manufactured hovel, pieced together by the previous owners with, I'm guessing, Elmer's glue, duct tape, and a serious inability to comprehend symmetry nor really, aesthetics of any kind. So this post is not borne of malice nor judgement pertaining to the conditions in which people live. Just crazy fucks who clearly fell through the system.

But we have this neighbor, who lives at the end of the cul-de-sac behind us, whose home and yard are actually pristine. But something is terribly amiss. He, whose name I do not know, is a peculiar, and possibly dangerous, semi-shut-in, whose abode is plastered with a frightening assortment of signs and the most original lawn ornaments I've ever seen. Clearly he is mentally unstable. He drives through the neighborhood several times a day, at 1 mph, in a truck covered in confederate flags, looking for God knows what. But I'm guessing lesbians. Hear me out.

Several years ago while walking with the kids on said cul-de-sac, Todd and I were quite alarmed to discover that at the very bottom of his driveway was a seemingly brand new toilet, with a jug of bleach on the seat, and huge containers of laundry detergent sitting next to it on either side. Furthermore, his very clean dwelling is adorned with extremely explicit signs saying things like, "Hang the dykes," and "Bitch crossing." Now, it is worth noting that this is not Wisteria Lane, and we do not know our neighbors, especially the ones behind us, but somehow, Todd surmised that the target of these hostile, unsightly, visual assaults is a lesbian couple in a neighboring house. Mind you, I've never laid eyes on this couple, nor do I have any proof that they exist, nor does their house have a rainbow flag out front, nor anything else that might raise the ire of some crazy old coot looking for an outlet for his rage. Their house is clean, their yard well-cared-for, cars new. So my best guess is that his "crimes" are purely hate-driven, which makes me very glad his fence is sooo high, as it is in our yard. Oddly enough, while he has always raised every red flag I possess (and I've even borrowed a few from others), the kids and I used to see him every morning at Borders, when we used to do our schoolwork there. He ordered coffee, black, and chatted amiably with the staff, and then shuffled out, presumably to scour our neighborhood for any goddamn deviant dykes. Todd has also said that he's chatted with the psycho over the fence before, and that he was totally normal and conversational. But, um, hello! He has a toilet on his driveway, stacked with cleaning solvents, presumably to cleanse his territory from the vileness of the lesbians. (Gasp!) I mean really, can a person who patrols the streets eerily, and who has a toilet on his driveway, and a noose hanging from his antenna really even be on the spectrum of normal? My verdict is no. Recently, as the snow has invaded, I've walked around my back yard in the morning, and several times have heard him, though I can't see him over the fence, come out onto his porch as early as 7:30am to scream and bellow at the offending dykes. It is really disconcerting, and I am dying to know if they've actually done anything to him, besides exist.

So yeah, it's really odd, and sometimes creepy. I mean, one would think, even with an antenna from the olden times, that he could find something on TV compelling enough to keep his scary ass inside. Then again, we have premium cable and there's never a damned thing on...maybe I ought to start screaming out my front door at our neighbor who always parks askew in his driveway.

I was able to capture these pics from my back porch. I tried to peek around to snap the toilet, but the fence was too great a barrier in my invasion of his privacy. It's just as well, I'd prefer he not know I exist.