You can’t make this shit up
We all have them… neighbors… There is no getting around them, unless you have shit loads of cash and can buy your own island. I however, would love to be able to afford a very deep moat, infested with large hungry alligators. It’s almost the same as an island, but cheaper.
This all started in 1999 when we bought our house. My “Neighdar” was on hiatus that day. I failed to take note of what was behind the thick, lush cover of overgrown bushes.
You all remember the movie “The Burbs”? Well, this is the sequel. They appeared from the darkness through the thick underbrush carrying a bottle of wine, a very neighborly thing to do.
They introduced themselves as, well let’s say… “The Klopeks”. He fancied himself a Sensei Master, she seemed somewhat normal, never letting on she was a psycho nutcase from the planet Zoloft, which is in the same constellation as Paxil and Xanax.
We sat in our yard and sipped wine with our new neighbors. That is the end of the “normal part”.
The next encounter we had was odd. They had asked if it would be ok if my son joined them to see a movie. Apparently Mr. Klopek had gotten some computer advise from my son and he wanted to repay him by treating him to a movie. I saw no harm in it; they were still taking their normal pills.
When 1 a.m. came and went, I became concerned. When 3 a.m. came and went I started to panic. I sent my husband over to see if they were home. The car was not in the driveway. We were standing on the front lawn with phone in hand ready to call the police. At that instant they pulled up in front of the house, the back car door opened, my son got out and they drove off. Never uttering a word about why they kept my child out until 3 a.m. without so much as a phone call, or an explanation. This was in June. We didn’t see or hear from them again until the winter.
We had gotten snow and our town requires all walks be cleared of so the kids can walk to school. It was like 11:30 p.m. and all of our lights were long out. There was a knock on the door. I looked out the window to see who it was. I turned to my husband and said… “It’s that Vampire Klopek”.
I flipped on the light and opened the door. She said the police had called and left a message on their machine that they needed to clear their walk or be fined. She went on to say that their shovel was broken and asked if she could borrow ours. I told her to just leave it by the front door when she was done with it. When I got up the next morning it was sticking in the snow bank by our front door. There wouldn’t be another sighting until spring, when some mail was inadvertently left at their address. Again there was a knock at the door, only this time it was early evening. I opened the door and the envelope was in between the screen and the door. She was running away towards her yard skipping like a gazelle over the bushes without a word. The sun was setting and I guess the danger of her melting was still a threat.
The next sighting was summer. My husband and I were out on our patio enjoying a glass of wine. They had a small group of people over, which in itself wasn’t abnormal. The abnormal part was that the women were dressed in togas and the men looked like a bunch of mid evil leftover troubadours from the Renaissance Fair. This was all being choreographed by Mr. Klopek the Sensei, who is a Francesco Scavoulo want to be. He was filming the action; the women were on the deck in their togas with rings of flowers in their hair. The men were pseudo sword fighting to music, which was gradually reaching a crescendo, and at its peak volume, they all turned and went into the house, followed by Sensei Klopek. Bizarre doesn’t exactly describe it, Caligula did come to mind though.
It was fall before we would be entertained again. It was a warm Indian summer evening and my husband and I were on our patio enjoying the last little bit of warmth before the crisp autumn nights arrived. We were perched in our lounge chairs when we heard a strange noise. It was a swishing, swooshing noise, which seemed to be coming from the vicinity of “The Vampires”. I strained my eyes to see. It was black as pitch and sure as shit she was on the roof of their house sweeping. My husband and I made a pact that if we heard a thud, we would just ignore it and go inside.
Fall did indeed come, and the leaves dropped off the trees. This drew them out into the yard to rake and blow the leaves. The part that earned them the name “The Vampires” was their ritual of yard work in the dark. We’re not talking dusk, we’re talking dark. When the sun is rising in the Middle East, their doing yard work while the Western world sleeps.
One night during supper, I happened to look out my window to find him standing over a barrel of leaves with a flashlight. It took them hours to fill several barrels. When they were done, she proceeded to grab handfuls of leaves and sprinkle them back onto the ground until all the barrels were empty. Hell, dinner and a show!
My children have also witnessed this behavior. Much to my dismay, it happened while I was at work. I received a call from my daughter who was 13 at the time. She had just gotten home from school when Mrs. Klopek came screaming from across the yard with her portable phone in her hand. She had been talking to her father who was ill, when her phone battery died. She asked to borrow our phone. My daughter let her in to use the phone. She then dialed 911 from our phone for her father who was in another town. My son came home and found Mrs. Klopek rocking in fetal position in the middle of our living room. She left after the cops came to our house responding to the 911 call generated from our number.
All was quiet for many months until we started landscaping our property. Eight o’clock in the morning was not a good time for them to be awakened by backhoes and blowers. I thought it was reasonable. Especially since we had to learn to deal with their schedule of lawn maintenance and other activity. She protested the digging by jumping on back of a backhoe and almost getting her head knocked off. All of this was done in bare feet. The last time she had shoes on was the winter she borrowed our shovel. Mostly they called the police. They video taped all of our landscaping, paying close attention to detail by zooming in on license plates and panning out to a wide angle view. They threatened to sue us for cutting down our own trees, which by the way were dead. She told the cops that it was her father’s dying wish not to cut those trees. Also that she knew her rights, because she watched Judge Judy. She told my husband she was “almost a lawyer”. He told her the closest she got to Harvard was when she passed through Boston once. This went on all summer long. When the landscaping was done, the sightings stopped.
I caught her on a ladder up against one of the trees trying to tape a broken branch back on the tree. That was around the same time my son caught them in a most mondo bizarro act, which he thought we would like to observe. It was the middle of the night and Mr. Klopek was standing on his back deck with his arms folded across his chest. The spotlight was blazing holes in my retinas. She’s standing in the back yard with a rope and a wicker basket. She made several attempt to throw the rope up into the tree to try and wrap it around a branch. After about the 10th try she was successful. The other side of the rope fell to the ground. She tied that end to the handle of the basket and hoisted it up to the top of the branch. Then she lowered it down, untied the knot, put the basket over her arm, and walked to the deck and into the house. Lights out!
Seasons pass, years move on and the behavior manifested by these two just escalates to a whole new dimension of insanity. The latest and greatest came on Memorial Day of this year. I decided I couldn’t bear to look at that shit hole of a yard any longer. Piles of wood like they have a fucking pet beaver living on the property, not to mention the white rusted lawn chair that has been on the side of the house since 1999. The crumbling hot tub, the garage that has a panel broken at the bottom and that is ready to fall off its foundation and roll down the hill into the unsuspecting neighbors below. Not to mention the grass that’s now about two feet high and turning to seed.
I talked my husband into putting up a small section of privacy fence over our existing split rail. It was fairly early in the day and our guests weren’t due until noon. So we went to Lowes and picked up five 6X8 ft. sections of closed fencing and proceeded to slap it up. Out she came, screaming like a banshee about how we weren’t allowed do this, it’s ugly and illegal. Here we go again folks. Cops came, (cops not happy with them). They were told to stop and take their complaint to the town. After the officer left, she went inside and opened all of her windows and pointed her stereo speakers towards our yard and blasted Led Zeppelin Live as loud as her amplifier would allow. Cops were called again. She was allowed to play music until 10 p.m. On or about 8 p.m. she starts nailing crosses to the trees in her yard facing us. One was right above our new privacy fence. Cops were called again… apparently she can plant an entire crop of crosses in her yard if she wants to. The music went off at ten and the next day they did go to the town and complain. The ordinance is for no higher than 4 ft. without a variance. Since I don’t have the money for a variance or a moat with alligators, I had to cut two feet off the fence. It does Jack Shit now. It’s too late this year to plant anything that would grow tall enough to hide the hideous view. I do believe I saw rats over there. The health department is now investigating. He came to look today and asked why they would complain about a privacy fence? I said, “Because they can”.
I said, “Well, maybe I could plant some bamboo”. “Why would you do that?” “It’s insidious”.
My reply was… “Because, I can”.
Stay tuned for the continuing saga in the never-ending drama of what is considered to be my life!