Hello, my name is John, and I live in the hood.

Stefanie noticed a Constable putting a note up next door last week.



And sure enough, this is how the house has looked since Friday evening.



As James can attest, we haven't had much luck with the inhabitants of this house. Let's rewind years ago to when James was fresh out of school and living with me. We're sitting around kicking it one day and notice some folks moving in next door. Later that day a woman comes by and asks to borrow the phone. No big deal, they just moved in and don't have service yet, or so we thought. Well, her call happens to be to the police (I guess she and her boyfriend were in one of their many upcoming fights--curiously requiring police intervention).

Anyway, we have the fighting couple along with a healthy number of kids. As I recall, they had no transportation. This is a problem in and of itself since we're in the 'burbs, and there's not a lot within easy walking distance. I've lost track of the timeline with this crew, but I want to list a few of their antics:

1) They're chronic borrowers. I'm not sure they owned anything. After the elders had worn out their borrowing accounts at every house on the block they resorted to sending the kids out to ask for stuff (playing the pity angle I guess). Sampling of things they requested just from us:

-rake
-edger
-tomato
-corkscrew
-ice
-aluminum foil
-bread
-salt
-broom (which they didn't voluntarily return)
-knife
-screwdriver
-envelopes

We started keeping a list at one point because it had gotten ridiculous. I know a plunger was borrowed from the guy across the street (I'll call him GATS for the purposes of this story).

2) The boyfriend, BF, had no job. BF asks GATS if he knew of anything he could do. GATS worked in some construction-related stuff and asked around. GATS tells BF that he's found something for him, show up at place X on Monday morning.

Monday morning comes around and BF shows up at GATS house asking for a ride (as BF has no car). GATS tells BF he's not going to place X, and inquires as to how he expected to work anywhere if he didn't have reliable transportation.

3) While they had no steady vehicles of their own, plenty of peeps constantly showed up to work on their car stereos and whatnot.

4) This was around the time when you could start searching online for sex offenders in your neighborhood. I tested it out, and saw an address that was pretty close to mine. Turned out it was really close. The early-teen boy next door was a registered offender. Guess he was into young boys or something.

I'm leaving out some stuff like the nights James would see blue lights flashing outside his window when things got a little rowdy over there, maybe he can comment if he remembers anything funny. GATS informs me that the owner of the house was renting it to these jokers under Section 8, but I've never verified. Regardless, I'm against the program in principle.

At some point they leave or get kicked out. The house gets renovated (e.g., granite countertops). A new couple move in with their kids. Things start off pretty good with them. They have a ton of cars over there frequently, but hey they have a lot of family and friends. Good for them.

A while back we realized we hadn't really seen much of the guy for a while. I later found out why. He was busted in a raid on a heroin trafficking organization. The chick and her oldest son don't seem too big into yard maintenance after the guy's imprisonment. I also start having the pleasure of occasionally throwing empty beer cans back over my fence. Not sure how often they stayed at the house around this time (maybe just long enough to toss trash into my yard). Towards the end of their stay they buy/adopt a large, mean dog to neglect in their backyard. I think one of the other neighbors finally had animal control come rescue it at some point (may have been locked up in garage). So I think they've been gone since last year. They had some people show up one day to grab what they wanted (including the 3 ceiling fans from their back patio--who takes ceiling fans???). The stuff you see in the yard is just the junk they had no interest in.

I can't wait to see who we get next.