Part of my property includes this giant useless field that sits underneath power lines, where the options to do anything with are very minimal, because of the easement and by-laws and other bullshit that are tied to Georgia Power. Regardless, I am still responsible for my half of the field, and I do the absolute bare minimum in doing so, by paying to have my landscapers run the mower over it, so that the weeds don’t get so high any I have another neighbor try and anonymously report me to the county again, and have them threaten a lien on my property for something I had no idea was my responsibility in the first place.
Despite the fact that it’s legally my property, its ambiguity is still in question to everyone else in the neighborhood, who all seem to make the assumption that I once did, that the land isn’t private property, and that it’s perfectly acceptable for everyone to walk their dogs on, or for people to trollop all over whenever they want to.
Normally, I’m okay with the dogs and the occasional teen girl squad who want to take sunset selfies, as long as poop is not left there, and nobody litters. A few weeks ago, I came outside to see that a car had parked on the edge of the field and two teen lovers had laid a blanked out on my field and were just lounging out. It irked me, but I chose to not say anything about it, because I didn’t want to be the neighborhood Clint Eastwood always telling kids to get off my lawn.
Just recently though, I was coming home, and I spotted a golf cart sitting on my half of the field. I was like wtf, and it turned out to be this couple in the neighborhood that I recognized. I have no qualms with them, and we’ve been friendly in the past, so I didn’t think it would really be an issue when I came up to them, and explained that I don’t have problems with them walking their dog on my field, but if they would just not drive their golf cart around on it, I didn’t want them setting a precedent that other people would start thinking they could run vehicles on my yard, thinking it was public land.
Pretty immediately, the defense came up, and it was clear that they were not fans of being made a request of, and they immediately disputed the fact that it was my property, and that it definitively belonged to Georgia Power. They proceeded to bring up the fact that I was dumping tree debris from my fallen tree episode on company land, and that I had allowed so much tree debris to sit there for as long as I did because I have children and no time to clean up my yard whenever I want to.
It wasn’t a pleasant conversation despite both of us being able to keep it tensely civil, but I was thrown a tremendous amount of shade and passive aggression, with his wife chiming in that I should just build a fence, as if I have another spare $10,000 to erect a fence around the field, when I frankly don’t know how I’m going to pay off my credit cards at the end of this month.