Those of us who love interior design enjoy decorating our homes for the pleasure it brings to our daily lives, but let's face it, there is another reason that we take great care with our homes-to increase our property value. Unfortunately, one awful neighbor can make your property value plunge as low as the necklines of the contestants on The Bachelor. Years ago, before we built our current home, we had the family from Hell living right next door.
I'll call them The Lucifer Family because I am convinced that they were sent by the devil himself to make the lives of everyone on Farmbrook Drive a living hell. They moved in in the spring. It started out as not much more than a nuisance with the couple's two children, Son of Satan and Daughter of the Devil, bullying the neighborhood children. But as the days passed it escalated into Satan's spawn throwing eggs at our houses or swinging golf clubs in the direction of their latest victim. Two women in the neighborhood took to sitting in their driveways on lawn chairs in an effort to discourage such behavior.
I'd rather live next door to this guy than the Lucifer Family!Where there are bratty kids who derive pleasure from vandalizing their neighborhood, you can be sure to find incompetent parents. The parents had no problem leaving their children, 10 and 7 years old, unattended after school until they returned home from work at night. When they were home, it wasn't much better. On more than one occasion we watched as the children played on the roof of the home or started fires in the back yard as one or both parents looked on. Did it ever occurr to them that they might start our split rail fence or nearby shrubs ablaze? Apparently not. Unfortunately, it was also not uncommon to hear the father screaming and berating the kids, dropping the F-bomb along the way.
Of course these people were not very particular about keeping up their property. Have you ever wondered what type of people leave their Christmas lights up until April? Families like the Lucifer's, that's who. I'm unsure as to the reason that they rarely mowed their yawn. I do know that it wasn't because they were too lazy to clean up after their pets before mowing. That wasn't an issue. Their cat preferred my childrens' sandbox over their backyard as the litter box of choice. When kitty had kittens, she also preferred to nurse them on my deck instead of in the Lucifer's yard. What does it tell you when even the family pet can't stand to be near you?
They must have received some complaints about their childrens' extra-curricular activities because grandma came to stay with them for a while. She was an energetic and feisty woman who would often stand by the fence and tell me how she couldn't wait until they found a babysitter so she could hightail it back home to California. Grandma, not a lover of cats, once asked me if I'd like to take the kittens on "a little ride".
Once summer vacation arrived, Grandma left and was replaced with an older cousin who appeared to be about 15 or 16. This new babysitter didn't bother to supervise the kids, in fact, she had no problem allowing the kids to hop the fence to use our swing set, play ball in our yard and pretty much trash my flower garden.
After returning home from a week's vacation, I found dried eggs baked on the side of my house and a dresser drawer filled with toys lying on top of what used to be a grouping of flowers near my deck. I didn't even bother returning it. It went directly into my garbage can. When I told a neighbor what I'd found, she said the kids had been playing in my yard the entire week we were gone.
The months passed, I prayed that the family would move. One December morning I looked out my window to see a "For Sale" sign in their yard. It was the Christmas miracle the neighborhood had been hoping for! The house was on the market for some time before it sold, but the Lucifer's moved out in April, barely a year after they moved in. (Apparently, Son of Satan had bragged to the neighborhood kids that they moved every year since he had been born.) I was playing with my daughter in the front yard as the moving truck pulled away. My neighbor, John, who lived on the other side of the Lucifer house, walked up as the truck rounded the corner. He looked in the windows of the home for a few seconds. He looked over at me and said, "Just checking".
In the fall a lovely couple and their teenage son moved in next door. My husband and I brought them a tray of fresh-baked cookies shortly after they arrived. They invited us in and told us that they purchased the home for a very good price because there was so much damage to the property-holes in the wall, doors kicked off their hinges, writing on the walls, etc.. They were a quiet family and rarely did we see or speak to them, but I was thrilled to have them as neighbors.
How about you, do you have your own Lucifer family in the neighborhood? They have to live somewhere. I hope it's not next door to you!
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