The picture above is taken from my (bedroom) office window. It shows a pickup truck for the guy that lives across the street from me. Notice how it is parked at the street and his driveway is definitely long enough for him not to do that. He has a 2 car garage and there is a minivan at the entrance to one of the garage sides.
Yesterday I had lunch with a neighbor...different one. He was telling me how MY neighbor is becoming a real nuisance to the neighborhood. There were a couple of grievances, the most recent being that he parks his pickup truck right at the very end of the driveway. Now, I had seen this before but not even given it a second thought. I figured that he had a third car and was allowing room for that third car to go around and be parked in the garage. I never made any kind of judgement about it and it doesn't affect me because the exit to the neighborhood is to the right at the top of my driveway. I rarely ever go the other way.
But my lunch friend/neighbor says that this guy is doing this intentionally so that people driving by will not go onto any of his "precious strip of grass." And that he has done other things to divert traffic as well. In fact the city forced him to remove some huge stones he had parked on his lawn by the street...but at the corner, not the driveway.
So I took a closer look. The hitch ball on the truck is actually in the street, even though the bumper is over the driveway. Now I understand my friend's complaint. Anyone coming too close will damage their car...not to mention damaging the truck too. It is a passive aggressive maneuver by the truck owner.
But I have two questions:
1. Why does he need to park his truck there? First, his grass isn't all that great. Second it looks trashy. He is protecting the look of one thing at the expense of another. Just doesn't make sense.
2. Why does my friend complain about it to me? Am I supposed to go ask the guy to move his truck? No way! I wasn't even bothered by it until it was pointed out to me.
And that brings up another concern. Say someone reports this to the neighborhood association or the police, and they tell the guy to move his truck. Will he then think that I was the one that ratted on him? I've never bothered him before and he doesn't bother me. But the other day I was watching him blowing his leaves and he saw. It was innocent...he has a cool attachment he made for his riding lawnmower and I admire the ingenuity. But if he is told to move his truck, perhaps incidents like that will make him think I'm spying on him.
SO, in the words of Dad/Marcel..."What would you do?" I don't know what's going to happen, but for sure SOMETHING will. I predict that a teenage driver is going to smash into that truck (my mailbox post gets hit about 3 times every 5 years...usually by a teenager not paying attention).
