Move Over Ari Gold. I have a new personal hero:
An Omaha man mowed an obscenity into his lawn, and now his neighbors are upset because they don’t want their children to see the nasty language.
The homeowner, who neighbors told Omaha TV station KETV has the last name Miller, cut a two-word expletive into his front lawn after being warned by the city about excessive grass and weeds around his house. The phrase is about 30 feet long across his yard.
“I saw the neighbor’s yard with some derogatory statements mowed into the yard,” said neighbor Traci Tunzer.
Tunzer said she’s been hoping her neighbor would mow the long grass in his yard, but she’s upset by the way he decided to mow it. Tunzer said there’s a school nearby.
“I have three children, and two of them will definitely know what that says. It worries me,” she said. “We don’t want our children to be around that kind of stuff.”
Down the hill, neighbor Bernie Horstmeyer said he is in disbelief.
“When I first saw it, I saw the big ‘U,’ and I had to back up just to see if that’s what it really said,” he said.
I will always have a soft spot in my heart for cranks.
Rick
I will always have a soft spot in my heart for cranks.
John,
Then you must just love your new, post-Schiavo commentariat.
Cordially…
Demdude
Okay, crank stories.
There was a women I used to work with. She was very weird looking (we called her Chewbacca, she did look like that!). Her neighbors bitched because her house had paint peeling off of it. The neighborhood association got on her to paint. So she bought 20 cans of paint and covered the house. Of course, they were 20 cans of paint with 20 different colors. It was a very weird house for a weird women. I guess what would you expect from a wookie!
Horshu
But what…about…THE CHILDREN!!?!??!?!
DougJ
Let’s hope the FBI’s new anti-porn squad looks into this one.
Geek, Esq.
Has no one photoblogged this yet?
Walker
I was at Dartmouth when Ludwig Plutonium was on campus. Met him a few times. Now there was crank! I even have some of his “scholarly articles” (full page ads purchased from the college newspaper written to look like a scientic treatise) stashed somewhere.
KC
That’s great. It’s awesome that there are people like that in the world. A good friend’s father of mine was semi like that. He painted his house smurf blue with white trim and put a bunch of stuff in his lawn because he got tired of all the “down-and-out folks” in the neighborhood. Here’s to that guy. Wonder why he did it though?
ppGaz
So, when your “commentariat” (apologies to Rick) mows the F word into the BJ lawn here, you are secretly pleased?
I’m taking Rick’s blurb and turning it around into an honest question.
james richardson
it worries me. i don’t want my children around that kind of stuff. in fact, i plan to lock them in the house, turn off the tv and phone service, and discontinue contact with the outside world altogether. i must protect my children from all evil in the world. this curse word mowed into my neighbor’s yard will turn my children into homosexuals. pat robertson told me.
dlnevins
I agree! If I had kids, I wouldn’t want them to be around that kind of stuff either. I mean, who knows what might be hidden in that long grass? Yellowjacket colonies, fire ant nests, rattlesnakes…
Oh, you meant the words? Lady, there’s nothing there your kids haven’t heard a thousand times already. Save your worries for things that actually matter!
(Or maybe by “that kind of stuff” she means exposure to people who stand up for themselves rather than being meek little sheeple?)
Another Jeff
You used to work with Janet Reno?!
Krista
If the kids will “definitely” know what that says, then it sounds like they’ve already been around “that kind of stuff”. Hmmmm?
I say, anybody who is willing to buck the frightening, conformist, little-boxes-on-the-hillside tyranny of the suburbs is my frickin’ hero. Friends of mine live in one of those disturbing suburbs where you can’t tell one street from the other. All of the houses are either brick, or beige, gray or white vinyl siding. They decided to go with a soft, creamy yellow. Well, when it arrived it was a bit brighter than they thought…more like a pale lemony yellow. Still v. pretty, though, so they put it up anyway. Well, the shitstorm that ensued…you’d think they had painted swastikas all over the house and thrown a few junker cars up on blocks in the front yard for good measure.
Tony Alva
I used find amusement in stories like this too until it happens in your own neighborhood and you find yourself losing 6% of resale value on homes in your subdivision within an 18 month period due to homes in disrepair, unkempt property, over occupancy, transient rental property, etc…
I used think quite differently before I actually owned a home. I’m completely 180 now. I even ended up serving on the association in a losing attempt to keep the slide from happening (and because no one else would do it) to no avail. Turns out these situations are NOT funny at all.
People have a right to let their grass grow, paint their house weird colors, etc… as long as it has no negative impact on others around them. There’s also a moral obligation to TRY and get along with your neighbors. Most of these jackasses signed a letter at closing stating compliance to covenants. This means they’re legally obligated to comply with a “community standard”.
In my experience serving on the association, I discovered that 99% percent of the cases these “non-conformists” like the person described in the post have no constitutional/libertarian motives for their action/inaction in taking care of their property. Nor have they fallen on hard times financially and don’t have the means to take care of their property. No, they turn out to be just cantankerous, lazy assholes who have taken childish offense to someone else asking them to make a repair or mow their lawn.
Don’t want to mow your lawn, buy a house in Nebraska, not next door to me.
There, I feel better now…
DougJ
Wow, was not expecting a Ludwig van Plutonium reference here. That guy is a legend in scientific circles much the same way that Darrell is a legend here.
Lines
Tony, they make gated communities just for people like you.
Back on the topic of the letter, I love how she says “2 out of the 3 kids”. Honey, I’m sure the third one knows the words as well, stop kidding yourself, and stop acting shocked. Its all an act, its fake and its stupid.
Krista
Tony: I can kind of see your point. If I took really good care of my house and property, and took pride in it, I’d be disappointed if my next-door neighbour let the place fall to ruin and turned it into a total dogpatch. But that doesn’t seem to have been the case here. His lawn was just too long. That’s all. I just find that there are a lot of cases where the “community standard” turns almost tyrannical.
Angry Engineer
Heh – I can see my wife doing something like this after our next battle with the zoning board. Given the size of our yard and the fact that we mows it with a Kubota, I think I can safely say that any “two-word profanities” will be a heck of a lot larger than 30 ft across.
Don
Reminds me of the pranks the more patient kids in my high school used to do; they’d write on a person’s lawn in gasoline in the middle of the night. It would take several days but it would kill the grass and reveal the written message. Took a long time to grow back too.
worn
My father owns a house in a subdivision in east Texas, one that has CC&R’s for the neighborhood which prevent, among other things, people from parking boats or RV’s in their driveways! My dad’s next door neighbor was ultimately singled out by the neighborhood association for where his boat was. Funny thing was that they approached my dad in hopes of convincing him to make a nuisance claim – apparently their demands have more teeth when an immediate neighbor complains. My dad said hell no, pointing out to them that not only was the gentleman in question his friend, that he didn’t care where the guy put his boat but also that it would be somewhat foolhardy on his part to get into a spat with the folks next door. Unabashed, the association preceeded to hassle the man about the boat, going so far as to threaten legal action. His solution was incredibly simple in its execution, while at the same time complying with the covenants & giving the association the infamous single finger salute.
What did he do? Merely pulled his boat out in front of his house, parking it at the curbline – the street of course being the public right-of-way; at that point nobody could say a damned thing!
james richardson
this woman wasn’t worried about her property values though; she was worried about her children seeing bad words out in the world. if it was just property values, she could have waited til he went to work and mowed his lawn herself.