Oh, I would never go there. I have a number of relatives who have gotten involved in literally decades of tit-for-tat retaliations against lifelong neighbors. It’s a terrible, unhappy-making way to live. One guy “got even” with one of my aunts by blowing his dried leaves into her yard on a regular basis, long after the score should have been evened. …

Then there was the family with the noisy dog right behind her yard who would let “Bandit” run loose and crap all over her well-manicured lawn. So, she collected all the accumulated turds over a period of a couple of months, put them in a gift box and mailed it all back to them.

I had an uncle who had a standing petty-fest with his next door neighbors to the south of him. There was no end to the accusations, back and forth, as to who was the most disrespectful and/or thoughtless/careless neighbor. My uncle would throw rotten tomatoes from his garden over the fence and into the neighbor’s yard as a way to register his complaint. The neighbor, in turn, would clip big dead branches and limbs off his huge maple tree and let them fall into my uncle’s back yard. And then…

My uncle died last year and it’s only his daughter living in the house now. The neighbor goes to his second floor windows and “spies” on my cousin as she works in her yard. It unnerved her so much that she had a new, much taller fence put in between the two yards in the hopes that it will discourage him. So, now he’s threatening to report her to the city for installing a fence that exceeds the height limit. It never ends…

It wouldn’t be so bad if that was the worst of it, but, I kid you not, other family members have had to endure in-depth, lengthy reports and accompanying diatribe of each and every escalating episode, ad nauseum, literally for dozens of years. Some relatives wouldn’t even invite the worst warmongers to their holiday parties. Although, as kids, my cousins and I thought the stories and the outrage over such petty “insults” were hilarious and we would listen for hours, egging them on just to see how red in the face they could get.

I strongly advise anyone considering puncturing a basketball and throwing it back over the fence…Please! Think twice, because once you get that ball rolling and it starts gaining momentum and growing ever-larger, you will never be able to stop it because no one will be the first to wave the white flag of surrender.

NOTE: Almost 30 yrs. ago, my husband and I found our current home while attending Open Houses every Saturday and Sunday for months. It was the only one we’d seen that had a back yard on either side with the front of the adjoining homes facing the opposite way toward the next street behind ours (Yes some pretty long backyards, throwbacks to a wealthier time in this older section of town). As soon as I saw the privacy afforded “our” house with no next door neighbors to contend with (The yards stretched so far back from the house proper that no one ever really went there. They were more like back lots than backyards), I didn’t hesitate to whisper to my husband—Let’s TAKE IT!

We’ve never had the slightest difficulty with our immediate neighbors who are way across the other side of the relatively wide street or the ones two lots down from us on either side. We will never leave here unless someday we decide to ditch humans altogether and move up into the mountains. For in-town living, this is as private as it gets.