Where Things Have Gotten To Today

Hey Dude...It's Not Personal...BUT...


This topic has been stewing around in my head for a couple of days now, but in reality it's just a subset or superset of thoughts I have almost every day of every week of every year for some time now.

It seems to me that, thanks to our government and education system, no one is responsible for anything that happens around them any more.

Everyone wants the income and benefits of any given enterprise or endeavor, but no one wants to pay the costs of the risks of owning or doing.

Take my yard as an example.

We've owned this place since last April 25th, and in that time I've probably spent $1500 on lawn maintenance, and more importantly I spent $500 of that money having trees which were in poor or overgrown condition cut down and removed--including having the stumps ground out in anticipation of re sodding the affected areas.

Then last week after watching things look a little crappy with the grass not being cut and the leaves from our lot and the neighbors' property blowing all around I paid another $100 to have the grass mowed and all of the remaining debris picked up and hauled away.

This in addition to having two small fires in which I burned a bunch of crap that was laying around on the fence lines and pruning clippings which had accumulated around the place.

As of Monday of this week we had things looking pretty good and were looking forward to doing some over seeding and fertilizing in anticipation of the spring thaw.

Then on Wednesday afternoon we had a angry little squall line blow through the area and in the midst of the rain and wind one of the 15" white pines on our rear neighbor's lot decided to break off at ground level and blow over into our back yard, smashing a big 20' tall ornamental Holley Tree I'd been pruning on but missing Missy the Turbo Pup's fence.

No big deal I thought, since I've grown up wielding a chain saw and cut dozens if not hundreds of trees in my day, although I hate to admit that today I only own an ELECTRIC chain saw because my days of cutting cords of firewood are long over.

Any way, I made a phone call to my insurance agent, and stopped by my neighbor's house to let them know of the event.

You know what I got for my efforts?

Well, as of 5 PM TWO DAYS LATER I still haven't heard back from the insurance agent, but I did get a visit from the "Hubby" from the household that owned the tree.

"Gee he was sure sorry, but when his other tree fell and hit his neighbor's house his insurance paid and...since this tree didn't hit anything the way things work in Tennessee is that the cleanup is my (that would be me) responsibility."

He did offer to let me borrow his chain saw if I needed it.

Pat and I cut up the tree, tossed the smaller limbs in a pile on our property, and I'm going to stack up the logs from the trunk back on the lazy asshole's property out of sight behind my fence.

See people, this is where we are today.

There is no way that my Father or my Grandfathers would have or could have stood there and told their neighbor that because of the "government rules" relating to the "government mandated" insurance they be allowed to let their property fall onto another man's property and simply shrug their shoulders and walk away because the law let them do it.

This sniveling asshole bought the property with the nice trees on it, paid the value of the property with the trees on it, and when he sells his house that he's owned since 1990 (according to his own admission) he will benefit from the value of the aforementioned trees, YET...

this shit headed wimp of a man stops by long enough to say he stopped by, then walks away while people ten or fifteen years older than him to cut up his tree else pay to have it removed.

I wish a Pox on his household, and may the fleas of a thousand Camels infest his wife's privates.

...dammit