A Hero? I Think Not; Just a Victim of Circumstance

Me mugging it up with the 2018 Toyota Camry in Portland.

I'm not the kind of guy who is comfortable with uber-long absences from home. I define uber-long as anything over 9 or 10 days – and even that's pushing it. Three days, five days or even seven days are well within my comfort zone. Even when relaxing on vacation, anything past seven days can bump up my levels of angst and stress.

I am currently on day 13 of a 15-day sentence away from home. I am bonkers! How did such a thing happen? you may ask. Aren't you master of your fate, captain of your ship, king of your castle? you might add. Why, yes I am, sort of, to a point. I certainly don't have a significant other to whom I answer or feel the need to discuss plans. That in and of itself makes life less stressful and puts me in a better position not to have to spend more time away from home than I prefer. But, at times, I can screw things up all on my own as they just spiral out of my control.

A number of forces conspired to put me in this position. I am basically a victim of circumstance. At the heart of it, though, I am simply too loving, loyal and reliable for my own good. There, I've finally admitted it.

Here's how it went down....

I visit my sister and her family in New Mexico twice a year: Christmas and again sometime in the summer. Nearly a 1,600-mile trek, I am no longer keen to drive it, take the bus, train nor hoof it. That leaves flying.

Because I must bear the burden of the ticket price (very rare for me), I always book early to minimize the cost whether in Sky Miles (Delta speak for frequent-flier miles) or dollars. This means booking not just weeks, but sometimes several months in advance. I book the trip for 10 days just in case a carmaker media event crops up during my stay that a client asks me to attend. I can zip away for three days in the middle of my New Mexico stay and still have seven days to spend with family. Yes, I'm a peach.

My Goddaughter and I celebrating her Masters Degree at a nineties theme party in Albuquerque.

I booked my summer visit from June 9 through June 19. A few weeks after booking this trip, Toyota sent out invitations to its 2018 Camry media launch. Although it offered multiple waves, I chose the first wave, which meant flying to Portland, Ore on June 5 with a return home on June 7.

No problemo, right? I get home the afternoon of June 7, have that night, as well as the night of June 8 at home before heading to New Mexico on Friday, June 9.

Three weeks later, a client forwards an invite to me, requesting I attend. It's for the 3-day Audi A5/S5 Sportback media launch in Seattle beginning June 7. Freelancing is never saying, no. Not ever. If ever offered an assignment as I lie gasping for air, clutching my chest on my deathbed, I will screw up the last dregs of my strength to squeak out a raspy, HELL YES! Get it? I never say, no.

That's not to say I've never turned down such an assignment. I am this client's last-ditch go-to for carmaker events. Think of it as if I was part of some sort of homeland defense unit. This client wouldn't call me up until the enemy was storming the Magic Kingdom in Disney World. I'm that far down the pecking order. Consequently, often I don't receive these invitations until two or three weeks before the event. So, there have been a couple of times I've had to turn down the assignment simply because I was already booked on conflicting car events.

I immediately agreed to attend the Audi event and then had to try to figure out how I would overcome the logistics. Never, ever say, no.

What I wound up doing was blowing off my return flights from Portland to Greenville, and then flying on Wednesday the 7^th from Portland to Seattle. Friday the 9^th was to be the travel day home from Seattle. Luckily, I always book my longer flights out of Atlanta, rather than Greenville/Spartanburg. I can drop off whatever test car I have at the airport, picking up a replacement on my return. Unfortunately, though, my flight out of Atlanta to New Mexico was at 11 a.m. on that Friday.

My only choice was to hop the red-eye from Seattle to Atlanta on Thursday night. Delta checked my bags all the way to New Mexico and, once landed, I had three hours to make that flight. The one big fly in the ointment, however, was that my flight to Portland at the beginning of this mess was out of Greenville/Spartanburg, but my flight back from New Mexico at trip's end terminated in Atlanta.

I had to work out with the vendor supplying me with test cars to pick up one car in Greenville and drop off my replacement car at the Atlanta airport two weeks later. Geesh.

There you have it: my loyalty to my client, love for my family and reliability in my work ethic drove me to a 15-day absence. I'm no hero; just a victim of circumstance.

Fighting the Good Fight, or I'm Mad as Hell and I'm Not Going to Take It Any More!

Residential use? I think not. This isn't the Cleavers preparing for a picnic.

I'm not the kind of guy who yells, “Get off my lawn!” at the neighborhood kids. Actually, the neighborhood kids here are pretty respectful of other peoples' property. Of course, you could make the argument that my moonscape of a lawn doesn't warrant Defcon 2-like policing, and you would be correct. Anything short of driving an M2 half-track onto my grass...er, weeds...umm dirt would have little or no impact upon its condition. In fact, conspiracy-theory wackos, convinced we didn't actually land on the moon in 1969, believe the event was staged right here on little-ole earth, and suspect my yard served as the set. Drop by and I'll present you with a faux moon rock.

I must admit that the two-thirds of an acre upon which my Greenville home sits hasn't received much of my attention beyond mowing every 10 days or so from the start of April until mid October each year. From the time I purchased the house in the late spring of 2007, my only real cash investment in landscaping upkeep has been sporadically cutting down six or seven tall pine trees scattered around the property. (I still have two to go.) Otherwise, the only treasure spent has been on gas and mower maintenance, as well as barrels of weed killer.

The simple truth of the matter is, I have bigger fish to fry. Most of my energy and all my spare change have gone into remodeling projects inside the house. Ultimately, the inside is what will sell it once on the market. I'll address the landscaping if and when the inside is completed.

At the moment, this is the sign sitting on the corner of my property.

The other issue with focusing assets on the landscaping is, at least a dozen times since I moved into the house in the winter of 2008, some public entity has arrived on the scene to dig things up. ATT, Sprint, Greenville Water, the South Carolina DOT and other assorted felons descend on my property to lay cable, pipe or whatever. Although they do often stray inside my actual property lines, they mostly tear things up within the setback. Mine is a corner lot; so, this means they strip mine within the section of land roughly 15 feet from the edge of the two streets bordering my property. I don't exaggerate when I say that I have yet to get through 12 consecutive months without my lawn being violated in some way.

At this juncture, you might jump to the conclusion that I'm not particularly vigilant regarding what goes on outside my home. I do keep my head down and my powder dry, but that doesn't mean I don't pay attention. Because many of the homes around me are rentals, I historically have let minor annoyances slide, knowing most of the tenants last no longer than a year. The house behind mine has hosted more than a dozen renters in my eight years here. No matter how bad they are, I know these people will be gone in six or eight months.

As you see, my default attitude where my neighbors are concerned is one of laissez-faire. What sort of behavior on the part of a neighbor might motivate me to take action? I'm glad you asked. That's the real topic of this essay.

Here's the back story: When I moved into my home in 2008, the house across the side street from mine was occupied by an 84-year-old guy, who had owned it since honorably separating from the Navy at the end of the Korean War. Last year he apparently died at the ripe old age of 92. Clearly chain smoking and bitching 24/7 are pluses for longevity. After his death, his fat, chain-smoking hillbilly of a son, who also resides somewhere in this neighborhood, sold off his inherited house for the tidy sum of $29,000. No doubt in celebration of his windfall, the son waddled off, purchased a carton of Pall Malls and case of PBR, and partied like it was 1959.

Obviously, this was his house to do with as he pleased, but as the only house that has sold in this neighborhood in five years, $29,000 doesn't make for a good comp. I was ticked, but optimistic when it appeared the new owner was renovating it to flip. I even turned a blind eye when a crew of guys sans protective gear or even breathing masks stripped the asbestos siding from the house, tossing it in a dumpster that wound up who knows where. New roof, new siding, new paint, new wood deck on the back: The exterior was looking great. There was a lot of construction activity inside the house, as well. I had visions of the house reselling for four times the purchase price.

Sure, I thought it odd that it looked like the same crew of guys did the roofing and deck, as had replaced the siding, but I didn't give it much thought. Once the house appeared finished, there didn't seem to be much activity over there. I began to worry when a “For Sale” sign didn't appear in the front yard. I began noticing a heavy-duty diesel pickup truck or two over there from time to time. I thought they were merely contractors working on the interior. Silly me.

The poor quality of this photo is from being shot through my front-porch screen.

About three months ago, the side yard facing my house was suddenly full of heavy-duty pickup trucks and construction trailers with back hoes and so forth. Every night at least four or five diesel pickups and three or four trailers of some sort were parked there. Hmmm....me thinks this smells like a business being operated out of this house.

Around 6:30 each morning, it's like the staging the Normandy landing over there. In unison, all the diesels fire up and then idle for 15 minutes. There's beeping as they reverse to hook up trailers, guys are barking instructions at one another, and four or five sets of headlights blast into my bedroom windows. After the trucks depart with their respective loads of equipment and personnel, the lawn, which has yet this season to feel the sting of a mower blade, is strewn with all the flotsam one might expect of a construction site. There are big wood spools, like the coffee table in your first apartment, laying around along with lengths of cable and other assorted junk.

A month or so ago, as I was working around my shed, the owner wandered over and introduced himself. Turns out, he owns a cable-laying business in Atlanta. His only customer is Comcast. The house across the street is his South Carolina satellite office. A crew of his day workers, who look suspiciously like the same guys who did all the work on the exterior of the building, use it as a bunkhouse.

His main reason for approaching me was to ask if I had seen any suspicious activity around his house the night before. It seems someone hooked up one of his trailers and drove it off. About two weeks later, there were several sheriff's cars over there along with a CSI vehicle. Apparently he was robbed again. A real tragedy, right?

The carnage has now seeped into the lot behind him, as well.

There is a vacant lot behind his house. A week or so later, I saw him overseeing the cleaning up of that lot by the two brothers who own it. Evidently he either purchased or is leasing the property because now one of his trailers is parked on it. I fully expect him to eventually fence it in to try to secure his equipment.

I have been seething over this for three months. Last week I finally reached out to the zoning folks with a written complaint. This area is zoned residential and there is no way what's going on over there falls into a strict definition of residential. If this was within the city limits, I'm sure something would be done; however, this is the county, and I would guess things are a bit looser here. We'll see.

This was just the first of what may well be many shots fired in this struggle for truth, justice and the American way.