Do we really know who are neighbors are?

            A strange car was parked on our small dead-end street last week.  It was a seemingly abandoned white sedan and especially noticeable because it had rust spots and dents, and looked like it was at least fifteen years old. I hate to sound snobby but it was not your typical Biltmore Lake resident’s car. We knew it didn’t belong to any of our immediate neighbors.  “ Perhaps it belongs to a workman,” I thought.  We have dozens of construction workers all around us building new houses seven days a week.   Surely it would be gone in a few hours.

            The next few days passed with the mysterious white car still parked in the same spot. No indications that it had been driven. Those of us who live on this “no outlet” street called Black Horse Run, notice these things. Our section has four attached townhouses and we share the common area in front with the garbage pick up trucks, the landscapers, daily visits from the mailman, the occasional UPS or FED EX truck, the cleaning woman, the dog walker, and any friends or family, local or out of town, who park temporarily in front of one of our houses.

            Still, by the weekend no one had moved the battered car. It was starting to be annoying   I kept wondering who would have the nerve to dump an old car on Black Horse Run?  My neighbor D. kept saying she should call the police and report it but she didn’t. She often has complaints about living here but rarely speaks out. 

On Sunday we walked by the car after a morning hike and I noticed something new.  Two neatly printed signs were propped up on the dashboard and in the rear window. They had not been there before.  Typed in big computer print, they read,  “This car belongs to Richard H.  If you have inquiries please call me at ……”.    Inquiries?  Was this car for sale or a give away? 

Mr. H. lives in the next section of townhouses from ours. A recently divorced, man who owns a construction company he has an assortment of vehicles which are ever changing – from trucks to motorcycles, jeeps and spiffy SUV’s. But all are very new looking.  They are never all here at once.  New and different cars are parked in his driveway. He also uses his neighbor’s driveway, since they are rarely here. Once he parked a big truck in front of our townhouses and left it for nearly a week till my next-door neighbor B. nearly rammed into it trying to get out of her garage.  He moved his truck and it disappeared for a while.

Yesterday there were no signs that the car would be moved.  I told Art, “He shouldn’t get away with storing his junky old car on our end of Black Horse Run”.  Art agreed to call the number on the sign in the car window.  And he did.  I heard him leave a very polite message on behalf of the residents at our end.  Within a half hour, the phone rang and it was Mr. H.  Art talked to him and then hung up.

            “What did he say?” I asked, imagining his refusal or at least an explanation.

            “He will have it moved tomorrow morning,” Art told me.

            “Is that all he said?”  I asked

            “No…he thanked me for having the guts to call him.”

            “What???” I was astounded.  Was this neighbor testing us to see how long it would take one of us to call him up and complain?  It certainly seemed so.

            Then Art quietly reminded me of the horrific shootings of three Muslim college students in Chapel Hill recently.  Supposedly they had been gunned down in their apartment over a parking dispute with a neighbor.  The event shocked all of us in North Carolina and the murderer is now preparing an insanity defense. 

            Art reminded me once again about the kind of society we live in now.  No one speaks out just in case they might trigger some anger or hate as happened in Chapel Hill.  “But this is beautiful Biltmore Lake,” I wanted to counter. All I could think of is perhaps we should not be trusting our neighbors even here. 

            Today when I came home at noon, the battered white car was gone as promised but now parked up in Mr. H’s neighbor’s driveway on the other side of his townhouse.  AND to make things even more interesting he has posted his own big sign on a wooden stand in front of his house.  The sign says his townhouse is available for lease or sale immediately and he quotes a price.  In some ways we’d all breathe a sigh of relief if he just moved on. In the meantime, Art has become the hero of our end of Black Horse Run because “he had the guts to call”.