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I would assume he has a screw loose, and since he is old, I’d do my best to be polite.....the first time he confronted me.
After working in customer service for many years, I’m pretty good at schmoozing irate people. Usually, they want to be heard and sympathized with.
“Oh, General Asswipe, I can see that Mrs. Asswipe did a lovely job on these flowers. I can see why you are protective of them. Don’t worry about my dog, we are always very careful when we walk past.” I look at it as a game I play. It seems like the other guy wins, but really, I do.
I never said I owned the parking area in front of our home. I did say that out of respect people have normally parked in front of their own homes. Out of respect people don't normally take that space in front of your own home. I have lived here for my entire life. That is how it has been.
When a home owner moves multiple families into a 1,600 square foot SINGLE family home, that is where the problems occur. Our street is not designed for that. These homes were not designed to be multi family housing.
We do have a driveway. We also need one spot on the street. To make sure that we get our one spot we take two. If we go somewhere in the evening, take the kids to class or something, we still end up with at least one car on the street.
I don't know anything about shoveling snow. What I have heard is that in many places, if you shovle it out that is your space. May want to check in your area. Others may want to chime in on this. Not something that I worry about as it does not snow here.
In our city we have homes built before cars were around as well. People had horses and kept buggies in a carriage house. In later years these carriage houses became one car garages. Some later on tore these down and built larger garages. A lot of these homes still have the same original carriage house on the property as well as a two car garage.
I was going to respond to a couple of your posts but ContraPagan has already done a good job. I don't know what size town you live but your perceived right to park in front of your house doesn't exist in cities or larger towns. People rarely park in front of my house in a rural development but my son lives in the city of Pittsburgh and it is first come, first served. The only exception is an old Pittsburgh custom of reserving your parking place with a chair when you shovel the snow to clear the space.
I live in a small city. We have trees that have brick borders around them with mulch on the sidewalk. In my neighborhood people plant flowers around the trees in the little bordered area to spruce things up. These trees are not on anyone's property-- they are on city property-- so technically we shouldn't do anything to them but it makes the place look nice. None of us have front yards. Its usually very pretty.
One of my neighbors down the street is a older retired Naval Officer who seems to believe that the street is his ship and he is the captain. The other day as I was running an errand I noticed him angrily confronting a woman who was walking her dog because he was sniffing the flowers in one of these bordered areas in front of this guy's house. The dog did not appear to be doing anything but sniffing and the man accused her of having her dog poo "on his property". The woman said her dog was not pooping, that he was well trained and that this was not his property but city property, and the man threatened her with a lawsuit, yelling about "people who don't have pride of ownership like I do" and how his wife planted those flowers. The whole thing was absurd as the woman has a right to walk her dog AND this guy doesn't own the property he was complaining about.
He has demanded that we move our car from in front of our house (street parking) because he wanted to park his huge SUV in his space (again, street parking, metered. This is not HIS space. He has a space behind his house, but likes to park in front of ours) and interfered with a city yard sale because he didn't want people walking by his house. He actually threatened people if they didn't cross the street instead of passing his door. Its really gotten to be a problem.
Any ideas on how to deal with someone like this? He definitely has anger issues and is never polite but always confrontational and a hair shy of threatening when he approaches.
There was an episode on the ID Channel..I forgot the title, but it's about neighbors who get along at first but relations gradually deteriorate over time to the point of violence resulting in serious injury and death. One show that is really bookmarked in my mind is that of a retired Navy officer who still believed everyone should abide by a regimented and structured set of rules and protocols, even if they are not in the military. The neighbor was the live and let live type and his property was decorated in the eclectic style, colorful, while the retired Navy guy was by the book and no room for error. They got along at first, but things rapidly went downhill after a couple of minor disagreements and it turned ugly.
This man you speak of probably was in charge of a large group of people throughout his military career, was used to receiving a monumental level of order, deference and submission, abused his authority and is of the mindset that things work a certain way and any deviance from that order is grounds for confrontation and discipline , especially if that person is "disobeyed" or "disrespected". i've been in the military and by what you described, he sounds like someone who didn't treat his subordinates well and demanded respect instead of earning it.
Unfortunately, this man has carried over this same mindset into his shared civilian living space and he has NO authority over you or your neighbors..
The best course of action is to record any negative interactions, as well as report him to the authorities if he assaults or touches anyone. In fact, the time to get proactive is now, and not when and after this guy decides to fly off the handle.
Being a retired officer doesn't entitle one to bully his neighbors and you don't have to tolerate this.
Whatever you decide to do, you should do it as a group.
Hm. I wonder if you'd ever considered creating a "block organization." Get all your neighbors together first, agree between you who will be president, and when your sailor joins, with the intent of bullying everyone, you'll all be united against him.
My daughter lives in an HOA- I think the only thing the HOA does is pay the street lighting, makes sure there are no trailers parked in yards- very simple HOA- I think it is $35 per month. anyway my daughter always takes her 7 lb dog for a walk and the president of the HOA always yelled at her that she couldn't walk the dog on the sidewalk. She stopped walking passed his house, but one day he was driving by, got out of the car and screamed at her that she couldn't walk the dog in the development.
I guess she was having a bad day and started crying. My son in law is very mild mannered, but when the guy made my daughter cry my SIL had had enough. He went to the guys house, knocked on the door and asked if he had a problem? SIL told guy he made my daughter cry and he needed to apologize her her. The guy continued, stating he was going to call the police and have my daughter arrested for this and that and she would end up in jail.
Again my SIL is very mild mannered. He pulled out his cell phone, dailed a phone number, handed the phone to the guy and said, go ahead call the police, I dialed the number for you (the guy just had to push the call button on the cell phone). SIL also pulled out his badge, told the guy to tell the police dispatcher that he was calling about detective so & so wife.
The guy had no idea my SIL was a detective for the city. The guy froze and told my SIL there was no reason to call the
police. My SIL put his hand out, shook the guys hand and said, 'I'm sure we have an understanding now that you will no longer be yelling at my wife or anyone else in our development."
My daughter still walks the dog in the development, but not passed the guys house. My son in law waves to the guy everyday when he sees him. The guy just looks and never responds.
I was going to respond to a couple of your posts but ContraPagan has already done a good job. I don't know what size town you live but your perceived right to park in front of your house doesn't exist in cities or larger towns. People rarely park in front of my house in a rural development but my son lives in the city of Pittsburgh and it is first come, first served. The only exception is an old Pittsburgh custom of reserving your parking place with a chair when you shovel the snow to clear the space.
We live in a small community of 207,000 people. Once again I never said that the street was owned by the home owners. I did say that ever since I have lived in the area, out of respect other neighbors left the area in front of the home clear for the home owner that lived there. When we moved into our home in 2010 that is how things were. On my street we have 20 homes, 10 on each side of the street. Each home has 60 feet of frontage. Take out the driveway and that leaves each home with about 40 feet of space to park in front of the home.
These are all single family homes between 1,500 and 1,700 square feet. Three and four bedroom homes all with 2 car garages. The problem that our neighborhood does have is that two homes have multiple families living in them. And it turns out that in our city you can not rent a home to multiple families. just as you have no control over the front of your home you also can not stick three or four families in a single family home. They get around this because no one is "renting" as in has a rental agreement. These families can not afford to live in our neighborhood so they go in together on a home.
So you are saying that people can save a space that they shoveled the snow out of? I had heard that happens although some say it never happens.
If it were me, the next time he harassed me, I'd tell him that his behavior scares you, and the next time he approaches you, you're calling the police.
I wouldn't wait for "the next time". When the police come to talk to you, make sure you have other neighbors to back you up.
We had a neighbor in the 1970's who was adamantly opposed to someone parking in front of his house. Now, he wouldn't park in his driveway because he was afraid of cracking the concrete and he wouldn't park in front of his own house because, dammit, he didn't want anyone parking in front of his house. Instead, he'd park in front of our house or the house on the other side of him.
A library was across the street, with a small parking lot which was often full and occasionally, someone would park in.front.of.his.house. He'd scream at them.
Finally, he went out and painted a striped "no-parking zone" on the street in front of the house. It was a pretty ****-poor job, too. We called code enforcement and they came out and told him to remove the paint. He got all innocent and stated that he had NO IDEA who put that there and that he didn't see why he had to remove it. They told him to remove it or they do it and put the expenses on his tax bill. He had to rent a sandblaster to get rid of the paint.
He also didn't like people walking by and "looking" at his house, either. If you turned you head toward his house, he'd yell from the front porch to "STOP LOOKING AT MY HOUSE!"
I was so glad when we sold that house. There was no dealing with someone like that. He had picked fights with about everyone in the neighborhood. While we were on vacation one year, somebody spray-painted obscenities on the side of his house that faced ours. Of course, he told the police we had done it. The police came by and told us that they knew we hadn't done it but they had to humor him by talking to us. The list of possible suspects (people he had tangled with) was in the 100's.
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