Out here in the boonies, in my neighborhood, we have an odd assortment of crackpots, oddballs and individual thinkers. I believe I fit right in. We mostly ignore each other, which works well for me. When I first moved here, I had heard about plenty of strange fights, some involving the calling of police, others involving alcohol and absconding with money collected from neighbors to repair our dirt road. It was inevitable that at some point I would join in the merry fracas, but thought that keeping to myself would either make it less likely or at least less frequent. I have wondered if I sometimes overreact, and if we country folk aren't that bizarre, despite Sunday morning target practice. I would like to offer some proof to the contrary.
Yesterday I had a couple of friends out to enjoy the beautiful fall day. Neither had been here before, and one of my friends got lost. She was on the longish dirt road, and having a hard time making out the 4 digit numbers on the mailboxes, which is not at all uncommon. At one point, my friend pulled into the wrong yard, and apparently, instead of backing out pulled around on the "grassy" "lawn" (I use both terms loosely when referring to the green stuff that grows on the ground in my neighborhood) and drove out.
Hours later, we were enjoying a glass of wine on my porch when a big SUV began to drive by, backed up, and then pulled into my "driveway." It was the only car that we had seen in the hour or so that we had been out front.
"I wonder who that could be," said one of my friends.
"Doesn't look like Jehovah's Witnesses," I remarked as a white-haired, bearded white guy got out and slowly approached.
"What can I do for you?" I asked.
He was looking for the driver of the little car that had pulled into his yard. He wanted to let her know that he did not appreciate it, and wanted to make sure it did not happen again.
My friend, struggling to not look appalled, explained that she had been lost, apologized, and assured him that she would not repeat the indiscretion. To her credit (and our great loss), she did not say that she was disappointed, because she had been planning on driving through later on her way out. As it was, the trespassee looked somewhat taken aback at not having any way to further the fight, and awkwardly made his way back to his SUV
Okay, let's take a look at this.
These two guys were driving around looking for the car that had driven into their yard by mistake over an hour ago. Since we hadn't seen them drive by before, I can only imagine that they had been sitting somewhere about their property, maybe the owner of the property getting increasingly peeved at the nerve of some people to drive into his yard. Maybe he then went to the fridge and realized he had just drunk his last beer. So he enlisted his companion to come out with him to drive around the neighborhood as a spotter in order to locate the miscreant. Let me add that these are big front yards, her car was parked near the house and away from the street, in between our two other cars. It took some effort to locate.
Imagine the psychic -- and physical -- energy this whole endeavor took, not to mention the paranoid thought processes and the gas consumption.
My friend appeared to be rattled by this, I much less so. I have long held that if my neighbors were going to gun for me, with the fights we've had over loud and persistent racing of dirt bikes, and loud and persistent barking dogs, it would have happened by now.
Also, shortly before my friends got to my house, a quite large black snake made its way onto my porch, and after it quickly slithered away, came up a second time.
So I am no stranger to danger.
But as I thought about it later, given all the possible things that could be wrong in this dude's life, focusing on finding the person that drove into his yard to turn around could have reasonably been perceived as a red flag. And I do mean red. My friend suggested that part of his motivation may have been the Obama bumper sticker on her car. I wondered how someone of my age could have made out the words on the bumper sticker from that distance, but years of country living just may have blessed him with better eyesight than me.
I had been disappointed that during their visit my friends had not been entertained by a reappearance of the black snake, nor a peek at my cat who hid under the bed until minutes after they drove away. But they did get to witness an even more entertaining type of rural critter: the paranoid, angry redneck.
