“Wow! You sure carry a lot of clout!”
“Dan,” who lives a few doors down from me, was excited. He had seen me through his window earlier this week on my daily walk with my dog, Dixie, and then rushed outside to catch me before I got too far down the block.
“They started working on the front porch today and the owner says he’s going to paint the home, too. He even said he’s thinking of selling it!”
Dan was talking about the home across the street from him. We had been commiserating about it for a couple of years.
It all started with the following question Dan asked me in his front yard:
“Did you know that the house across the street from here has been vacant for years? The owner lives in a second home in Westminster and uses this one to store his junk in. He comes over and mows the lawn in the summer and shovels snow off his sidewalk in the winter, but that’s about all. He does just enough to get by.”
My eyes followed Dan’s pointing finger to the faded yellow house across the street. I had never really paid much attention to it. But the closer I looked, the more I realized there was a problem. The lawn was mowed, but the bushes in front were way overgrown. The front porch overhang was about to fall off because the cement porch that supported it had a crack in it the size of the San Andreas Fault. The home badly needed a fresh coat of paint, and I could see tall weeds and the rusted remains of an old camper truck through the cracks of a decrepit wooden fence.
As I surveyed the offending house, it dawned on me that I hadn’t seen anyone living there the entire eight years since Patti and I had moved onto our block.
“I’ve been inside,” he continued with a tone of disgust. “The whole house, including the garage, is packed floor to ceiling with stuff. There are just little narrow paths winding through the rooms. What’s more, I’ve seen squirrels and racoons going in and out of the attic. The backyard is overgrown with junk and weeds as well. I think the foxes we’ve seen in the neighborhood lately have a den back there.”
After a couple of years of similar conversations with Dan – and wondering why he didn’t do something about it himself – I finally told Dan I was going to take matters into my own hands and complain to the city of Arvada.
And that’s exactly what I did. I went online to Arvada’s website and filled out the form they had devised for disgusted neighbors like myself.
And voila! Three weeks later, I noticed the sound of jackhammers coming from the front porch of the vacant home.
“But,” you may ask, “Aren’t we supposed to love our neighbors as ourselves?”
Yes, we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. And part of loving our neighbors as ourselves is protecting our neighbors from the unreasonable behavior of another neighbor. If I were irritating my neighbors as much as this neighbor is, I would hope someone would point it out to me as well.
I guess you might call it “tough (neighbor) love.”
P.S. If you’re into flipping a fixer upper in Arvada, Colorado, let me know.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
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