Life’s Curveballs

Don’t you just love your neighbors? I really mean this sarcastically. I remember as a child my parents always talking bad about the neighbors. My dad even had some sort of altercation with one of our neighbors. I was very young, probably before school age, but I remember it to this day. To put this in perspective you probably need to know a little about my father.

My father was a paratrooper in the 193rd Company B, 17th Airborne Division, during World War II. Here is a brief synopsis of his unit’s action taken from the 193rd Glider Infantry Regiment (GIR) website…

A howling blizzard with below freezing temperatures greeted the 17th Airborne on the morning of 4 January 1945. General Patton had ordered the 17th Airborne to seize the town of Flamierge where the 11th Armour and the 87th Infantry Divisions had encountered brutal resistance from the Germans. Two regiments, the 513th PIR on the right and the 194th GIR on the left attacked the town of Flamierge while the 193rd GIR and the 507th PIR were held in reserve to counter an anticipated German panzer counterattack. In the ensuing days, the 193rd GIR as well as the rest of the 17th Airborne would gain their baptism of fire that would have tested the mettle of the most experienced airborne units. The fighting was so intense that the area would forever be called “Dead Man’s Ridge” because of the high casualty count sustained in order to take the strongly defended German emplacements.

My father was wounded on January 5, 1945 in this battle and out of the 5 men in and near the foxhole with him on that morning 2 survived, he being one of them, but both men sustained serous wounds and were taken to an aid station. I visited the aid station in February 1998, the same place where my father was taken on that day in 1945. I created a website about my visit to Bastogne. There is a very interesting article written by Bill Lynch (193rd MD) which you can view on the site about Bill’s memory of that time during January 1945.

I know that I’ve gotten off track with this story but this is a good reminder of what these men did. Even on the day of my father’s funeral in April of 1997, men that worked with my father came up to me and said that he was one bad s.o.b. in younger years.

Well back to the neighbors, as I said, there was some sort of altercation with one of our neighbors. I believe that something happened with my father’s dog and the neighbor’s dog. My father picked up a 2 x 4 and ran across the street saying that he would take care of it. A short time later, he came back and there was no further problem with that neighbor for the rest of time we lived there. I have no idea what happened, but that is how things were dealt with back in the 50’s.

Now, over 50 years later, I have my own problems with our new neighbors. However, nowhere near how my father handled it back then, the best I can do is just complain about them to my wife.

We moved to the country about 3 years ago and live on 3 acres, each of the lots are no smaller so the houses are spread out a good distance. We enjoyed the peace and quite for 2 years and then they built a house on the lot next to ours. Before our neighbors moved in my wife and I enjoyed stargazing, for there were no lights near our house and the stars were so bright at night. In our living room, we have a 14foot vaulted ceiling and the windows in the room are almost that high and we would sit in there on moonlit nights and enjoy the view, it was awesome. The first thing our neighbors did was install a big security light toward the front of their house, which ruined our night view. Our awesome view of the night sky is now polluted by a perfect view of a bright security light.

Before our neighbors move in, our Saturday mornings were spent in quite time on our back porch drinking coffee and enjoying the peace and quite of the birds and wind. Now they are spent indoors, for the noise of motorcycles, 4 wheelers, and our dogs going crazy because of the activity has driven us there. Our new neighbors have two young sons, with friends I might add, and they ride their motorcycles and 4 wheelers all over their property and elsewhere.

It seems no one respects the rights of their neighbors and I guess no matter where you move you just can’t escape the neighbors. They probably would find fault with our 9 dogs but I don’t think it’s even by any stretch. Got to love them, can’t shoot ‘em or go after them with a 2 x 4.