I first noticed her when she lived across the street from me. She would sit out on her large second floor balcony. Grand kids would come and go. She never bothered to wave or say hi. I tried to soften her up, I had a friend take her a little kids bike that we found. She said thank you.
One day she was sneaking around the back parking lot. I went out and asked if I could help her find whatever she was looking for. She said she had it under control. She was looking for a place to park her car. Appears she was moving in right next door to me. From the get go she had an attitude that seemed unfounded.
The next weekend she moved in. There appeared to be a weekend long party. Lots of folks coming and going. My peaceful existence was shattered.
There always seemed to be turmoil there. One by one more folks moved in. Or stayed the night a lot. Her daughter, her three kids, her daughters boyfriend and some teenage boys. I think at the peak there was 9-11 people staying there.
It is a non smoking building and frequently the sweet smell of pot filled the air. They smoked out back, out front and inside.
She took over the laundry room facilities while trying to keep up with dirty clothing for all of them. Every time I went down there she had the washer, dryer and folding table full. Never attending it. Left it there for days. I resorted to hauling my stuff to the laundromat It was easier.
Most nights there were 8 or more cars parked all over the place with "guests" that stayed all night. She was always kinda pissed that I had the driveway to park my truck.
One cold winter day the police questioned her daughters man, right outside my living room window. He was being questioned for passing counterfeit bills to the pizza delivery guy. He had a gun on him and went to jail.
After a long winter I went out to look at the 40ft garden that I tend to and things were starting to come up. There is hope for some beauty here. Couple of days later I noticed that some of the tulips were trampled. I kept my eye open and watched the 5 Grand children walking through the garden. I went out and explained to them what was coming out of the earth and that if you walk on them they will not have pretty flowers. I think we had an understanding. Well, I thought we did. I asked them every couple of days to not pull stuff up, knock it with sticks or peel the bark off the trees. Always talking to them like a teacher that just wanted them to know it was harmful and destructive.
It failed to stop. I tried to figure out what it was that I could do to teach them. I went to the store and bought seeds for them to plant their own garden next door at an empty house. They were into it. Or so I thought. They dug it up and planted pumpkins, sunflowers and cosmos. But alas they trampled on that too. We watered them with buckets and tried to learn how to take care of a garden.
To try and be cool with them I let them use my ring toss game, balls, paint, etc. Every day I would offer something else to give them something to do besides destroy stuff. I even went to the dollar store and bought them jump ropes and yo yos. They just held them by one end and swung them around. Never trying to learn how to use them properly. I got them paper and set up an art table. I supplied them with paint and sidewalk chalk. They would just paint and paint until the paper had holes from the water and too many brush strokes.
A good friend felt for my issues and showed up at the front door with a toy lawn mower, a baby stroller and some trike like things. Hot wheels and the like. One for each of them. They played well with them for weeks. Every day riding around the house 100 times or more. Until one day some cousins came to visit and as I was trying to take an afternoon nap I heard them smashing all of them with bricks, right outside my window. Like a feeding frenzy. Three or four boys would stand around the toy and all throw bricks at the same time to break it to pieces. Oh well......
This struggle went on for a couple of months. It was very frustrating. There had to be 5 adults over there and every day they would just let the kids out the back door to run around and break stuff. They were actually taking a plastic baseball bat and picking up rocks and hitting them towards the windows in the garage to see how many they could break. No one every watched them when they were outside. They would get in my car, throw rocks at passing cars, etc.
After all this, I went out to look at the garden one day and found all the flowers stripped off my larkspur plants. They had just bloomed. I was kinda pissed. I gathered up the petals that were all over the sidewalk and took them to her front door. I had not previously said anything to her. Just tried to deal with the kids in a nice way. I rang the doorbell. All of the kids answered it and when they saw me they went back in and closed the door. I rang it again. This time I said I wanted to talk to their Mom. They said that Mom was in the shower. Then where is your Grandma? They opened the door and pointed to her. She was sitting in the chair in the corner. I showed her the petals and said that something has to change. The destruction of the garden had to stop. She real matter of fact like just told the kids that it looks like you might have just lost a good friend.
They next couple of weeks she just did not let them outside. That had to drive all of the above crazy. Then one day she came to me on the front porch and started getting in my face. I was giving away flats of vegetables that I had gotten for free from Becks. Two neighbors were on the front porch. She went off in front of them. She asked me to move some plants off the stoop by the driveway. I asked why she needed them moved. She said if she lets the kids out and they happen to knock them off them I would do "what I do" and start bitchin' at them again. She then threatened me that, "If I continued to do what I do then certain folks might do certain things to me" that I would not like. I asked her if she was threatening me and her answer was, "No, I am just warning you."
When she went back in the two gals on the front porch asked me what did I think she was going to do. I said, "Either destroy the gardens or mess with my truck."
A week or so later I pulled out of the driveway in the morning to take a friend to Walmart so she could shop with her monthly food stamps and help her haul them home. We did this once a month. When I got to the end of the street my brakes felt kinda different. I think the pedal went down further than I was used to. I was going to drop her off at Walmart and go right to the oil change place and have them check the fluid level. I had all green lights on the way there. They felt even worse as I dropped her off. I said I would be back in an hour to get her.
As I pulled out of the parking lot it became apparent that I had a bigger problem than I thought. It would not stop at all. I down shifted to slow down some but it didn't work. I rolled into Michigan Ave right through a red light and when I looked to my left I knew then that there was going to be a BIG problem. Coming right at me was a huge cherry picker semi truck that was dragging a big commercial pick up truck behind it. Yep, it hit me going about 40. It twisted me around and took me with it. Smashed most of the front end of the truck. It pushed me up onto the grassy area and there it landed.
Now, I have no proof of what happened to my brakes but the events that followed gave me somewhat of a clue.
I came home with no truck.
She started to park in the driveway. When I told her that I was going to need the driveway she slammed the door on me right after she said, "No, you won't."
The teenage Grandson moved out that next day.
The rest of the lot of them moved out a week later.
