Good Neighbors

When it comes to home ownership, I am like a cheerleader…without the shorts and pom-poms (sorry for the disturbing image).

There was an ad for a bank years ago and it shows a couple moving into their house and the man is doing the Chuck Berry move…hopping along on one foot, with the other foot kicking in the air, while holding a large floor lamp like it’s a guitar. I tell buyers about that ad and tell them, even after more than a dozen years as a homeowner myself, I feel that way about my home…every…single…day!

I could write a book about all the things I LOVE about owning a home with my beloved, Robin and our four cats and pet rabbit…and trust me when I say; by the time I was done…it would be thicker than Tolstoy’s War & Peace.

“Peace” is the keyword here. There’s a sense of peacefulness living here. I’m totally serious when I tell you that quite often I say aloud when I’m at home: “I love this place.”

One of the sources of “peace” outside of our home is having good neighbors. Having good neighbors requires one thing…and one thing only…being a good neighbor yourself. I could tell you that once in a while I grab the big plastic trash barrel and blue plastic recycling bin of my neighbors and put them up by his backdoor. Another neighbor, living at a home I have listed…had the leaves in front of his house gathered up courtesy of my electric leaf blower…it’s amazing how far I can get when I plug it in to two, 100 foot heavy duty extension cords…um…that would be 200 feet from the backdoor.

Another neighbor while their mower was broken down, had their lawn cut by yours truly as I wasn’t going to let their son use it to play “find the cultch” in their lawn with our mower. It was memorable too as that was the summer I kept having the chest pains and after a tongue lashing from a dear friend and mortgage broker, I went to have my treadmill stress test a week early. Good thing too…99-percent blockage and three stents in my coronary artery later…I was even more grateful to be home and to be back with my wife, pets and great neighbors.

One time I got so carried away with the used snow blower we bought, I went across the street to the rental house and did their driveway… (it was the first year we had the snow blower…it makes a LOT of noise…and it’s FUN to use…and the excess noise makes it all the more enjoyable) and then realized, “Oh crud! They have someone who plows…and the plow dude won’t be too happy!” Thankfully, Mother Nature kept the snow coming after I cleared the driveway and left more of the poor-man’s fertilizer for the plow dude to clear off the driveway…like they said in the Big Lebowski…The Dude Abides!

The snow blower, when it was first dropped off…posed a conundrum…a dilemma…okay…A place to park that puppy! The house closest to us, was being rented out by the same guy (Mark) whose trash barrel and recycling bin often found their way home from the sidewalk courtesy of the Norwegian Shorthaired Retriever.

To start, he offered to let us stow it in his garage. The owner of the house who rented it to Mark was fine with it. Then one day, in one of the warmer months. I noticed the garage had been renovated a bit. Then shortly after that, the back of that same garage sprouted a narrow, covered deck…and said deck had this sturdy wooden ramp coming down on our side of the garage. It was the new home for our snow blower! Mark had even gone so far as to add an outdoor outlet and a cord…so I could prime, open the throttle and adjust the choke…plug in the cord…hit the button and VROOOOM…off to show those flakes whose boss.

It gets even better! One winter, the snow was heavy and slid off the garage roof and the tires of the snow blower…my MAN-MACHINE spun helplessly in the deep wet snow. It took a lot of shoveling and Yosemite Sam style cussing to get it free and out to the driveway.

I put the machine away after the driveway was cleared and we got even more snow and I wasn’t looking forward to another wrestling match through the deep snow that slipped off the garage roof. I was surprised though to find that the path to the back of the garage was already cleared…Mark had come along with his machine and cleared out the path!

This past season, Mark’s machine was in need of repair and I was more than happy to loan him ours.

That Mark and the previous neighbor, (also named Mark) always shovel out our fill-pipe for our heating oil so when the truck shows up to fill-er-up…there’s no digging, slipping, sliding or any Yosemite Sam language.

Other neighbors behind our house are known for their Yosemite Sam language. They’re a bit loud but good people. It took a while to realize why they were so loud, was because the head of the house, is hard of hearing.

Well, this past summer, I went out to the shed out back to grab the lawnmower. I saw something next to the shed that no one likes to see. “Irene” the large storm has brought heavy rain and some stiff winds, even up as far as Bangor…and as a result had caused the very tall tree by the shed to shift and lean…it’s root-ball was lifting up through the lawn.

As if that wasn’t bad enough…it was leaning…aimed right at our neighbors new, $8,000 all metal garage…which I later found out, hadn’t been insured yet. Instead of letting it continue to lean and go “SPLAT!” on the garage and paying the insurance deductible…and risking causing a rift with the neighbors…I went over to let the homeowner know.

He was very happy to be told. Reason one…he hadn’t insured the garage yet…and even though I was covered for a “SPLAT”, there was far too much risk of someone getting hurt and even if insurance covers replacement of crushed garages and the recreational vehicles inside…it’s no fun for anyone.

The tree which we thought was a big honkin’ Ash was in fact a Box Elder. We have a great Tree Dude who knows the science of trees as well as how to climb them with a chainsaw in hand, tethered to his belt.

Long story short…even though the Box Elder tree was on OUR side of the property line…our neighbor was so happy to be forewarned of the impending “SPLAT”…he OFFERED…(I did not have to ask) to pay for HALF of the cost to take the tree down. In addition, he and his son and friends actually came over to our side of the line and cut up the massive tree trunk and split the wood and took it off our hands.

We kept some large sections and my wife’s older brother who’s become a skilled wood turner, took some of the wood to make something nice for us, as a memory of the mighty tree that once provided shade for us and a playground and habitat for many furred and feathered friends…who enjoy the benefit of 10 or more feeders and a bowl of peanuts in the shell on the back deck.

It’s nice to have wildlife as neighbors too. It also took some time to realize that our yard was a regular stop on a migration path for a large number of birds. In addition to the birds, we have had groundhogs, who come and go and usually hang out under the shed and oddly enough, never mess with our many plants…having apples on the ground and two large raspberry patches helps. Coming down our street one day, I saw one boogying across the street at a rate of speed that would dazzle the Roadrunner AND Wiley E. Coyote! I drove slowly, looking down each driveway and getting to ours…there he or she was and then “WHOOSH!” back under the shed!

This past summer, in addition to the occasional skunk…(One went KA-PIFF! right next to the house…and YES it took a while to air out the house) we also had some four-legged night marauding bandits…I even had photographic evidence…YES! Raccoons!

The first time we spotted one here was very coincidental…We had just come back from a funeral inRockland. It was for my wife’s wonderful Uncle…Uncle Junior. One of the many cool things about “Junior” was the fact that as an adult, he adopted a wild raccoon. That evening, Robin turned on the light to the back deck and yelled up stairs to “Look outside!” Looking out from our upstairs bedroom window and there was our first furry masked bandit, helping himself to birdseed from the feeder hanging on the tall shepherd’s hook.

The “couple” who came by this summer were less shy and I managed to step out of the deck with the good camera and flash and got some great candids.

So I guess what I’m trying to say…Homeownership can’t be beat! Many times lately, I’ve met people, including some buyers, who are finding it less expensive to own than it is to rent…there are so many advantages…including having great neighbors…and being a great neighbor yourself.

written by Christopher K. Olsen, Happy Homeowner and Broker, Prudential Northeast Properties, Bangor, Maine