Light Up My Nights

 Light up My Nights

My house is bright at night. I have, by slow and patient effort, contrived to have every outdoor receptacle loaded with powerful smart bulbs that come on at dusk that illuminate the shadowy corners and blind spots all around our home until “dawn's early light”. I have often boasted about this, mainly because it is important to make sure that things are safe and there is an active deterrent in place against trespassers and evildoers. Years ago, one of our former neighbors proved to be one of these.

Compared to most houses around our neighborhood that are just dark all night, our house is lit up “from evening close to morning light” to quote Shelley. Some neighbors may have motion detecting lights that flash on and blind passersby causing untold thousands in potential personal injury lawsuits, but mostly, their residences are gloom-wrapped during the dark hours. Anyone so inclined could easily leap onto a porch or deck and pry into the house and be unseen in their burglarious chicanery. Such a thought freezes the Bare marrow. I would prefer keeping the house lit rather than allowing any ne'er do well even the suspicion that our residence is an open target. 

This is the primary reason that I keep our domicile lit, but the other reason is that we once had an ongoing battle with an old man who, by dint of his shortage of the milk of human kindness, felt as free upon my land as he did on his own. It eventually came to a head, but keeping the house lit helped.

The Bare's are good neighbors. We like to exchange treats at the holidays and help in crises. We are also disposed to understand that, when you live in close proximity to someone, there are bound to be eccentricities that both sides will have to navigate. It's just the way things are. We happened to move next to the most eccentric fellow there ever was, and little did we know it, but his reputation spanned all over our block and stretched back decades.

When we moved to our current home I hadn’t yet adopted this ‘bright house at night’ mentality, so our residence was often dark. This neighbor had already become a bit of a problem in the making even in just the short time we had been there. He has since shuffled off this mortal coil, but when we were newly moved in, this oldster proved himself a giant nuisance and part of the problem was that he just couldn’t seem to stay on his side of the property line.

We have a rectangular swath of grass on the other side of our driveway that we lovingly call The North Yard. It is perfectly park-like and verdant with green and growing things. It is the largest chunk of yard without a building on it in the few surrounding blocks. At one point, early on, I put out slate pavers and made a fire circle and we used to invite friends over to enjoy the quiet evenings on the cooler half of the year. 

The North Yard is the top right section
in red border (the backward L shape is 
our property. The Old Coot's is top left.

The neighbor (whose property is shown on the top left), however, made it hard to enjoy. I caught him sneaking across the North Yard on more than one occasion, taking advantage of the shade under the big trees. This was forgivable, if I only pretended not to see him. However, he caused me some frustration when, while we were away at the beach for a week one year, I returned to see that the grass in The North Yard had been mowed, and cut far shorter than I would have preferred.

When I approached the neighbor about this, he simply said in defense of his trespassing, “People think it is my yard”. I'm not sure, but I think I said “Cha!” in scoffing tones.

I clearly and firmly asked him not to do that there, here and he offered me a cold water bottle in what I thought then, was a gesture. Offering an olive branch, perhaps. Then, he did it again. He was clearly full of “treasons, stratagems and spoils”. We Bare's are a generous lot. We like to help the neighbors and we like to be of use. Sturdy neighborhood relationships build sturdy neighborhoods. I was raised to show deference to my elders. However, we have our limits. Cutting the grass while we're away because he had told people that that length of yard was his, was that limit. Doing it several more times after being told not to in no uncertain terms, was the frozen limit. As you can imagine, as Bertie Wooster might say, “this got right in amongst me”.

Three times in all, this fiend in human shape cut my grass without permission before we put up a fence to block his access. But during this silent groundskeeping war, I learned something that aided my approach after that.

During the 1950s and 60s, a very prominent local judge lived in what is now our house. The Right Honorable Harold “Hal” Hammer Walker, raised his family under this very roof tree. Walker updated and expanded the house and premises (and we have subsequently added to his additions) but he also had an ongoing conflict with the old neighbor that caused a rift across property lines.

I had the honor of helping Hal Jr. many times at the library, and, as the late Right Hon’s son and namesake, he regaled me with many tales of his father’s storied career. One in particular helped to assuage my tension about my pesky neighbor. On the property line between my western border (and the old fellow’s eastern one; see the above picture) are three magnolia trees. They’re huge and glorious, but like all such trees, they drop litter all year. I’ve allowed the space beneath all my magnolia trees to become natural areas as a result. This is definitely because of how much leaf litter they drop, but also because the big trees usually have fairly shallow roots which are murder to mower blades.

The old neighbor hated these trees, because he was more than a little obsessive about his yard, over which the trees hang. One evening, back in the early 60’s, the old gent waited until dark and came over onto the judge’s property and started to hack at the trees in order to kill them.

During this time, the judge had a groundskeeper by the name of Hoskins. Hoskins was an elderly man who had worked for the judge over many years and had become quite loyal to his family. Hoskins was leaving for the day when he spied the neighbor hacking away at the trees and shooed him back to his property. Hoskins told the judge, who made note of the situation. Some time later, the old neighbor came back onto the property to do more harm to the magnolias believing that, because the judge’s Cadillac was gone, the Right Hon. wasn’t at home. However, as he made his way through the gloom beneath the trees to begin his evil work, he bumped into something. Looking up in shock, he saw the judge standing there with a double-barrel shotgun broken open over his arm. Without a word, the judge closed the barrels and casually aimed it at the neighbor’s belly button. The message was clear and the neighbor never came back over. At least until I moved in, forty years later.

That situation has echoed in my mind. Nothing could be more resounding to me than bumping into a landowner who was not going to take any more guff from his irascible neighbor. If ever there was a formidable and fearless judge, that judge was this judge. We Bare’s are brave souls, but I had no inkling of threatening the old man with a shotgun. In later years in response to the judge’s threat to his well being, the neighbor put up a tall white PVC fence all around the back part of his property, in a large U shape. I’m grateful for this fence, because it has allowed us privacy and also helped to make a courtyard for us.

As I say, there were no shotguns in my plans, but once I knew this story and understood that the problems we had been having were nothing new, we decided to put up a fence around our North Yard. This prevented the man from coming over with his tractor to mow and also made it that much more difficult for him to use the yard as a way to scamper out and back on his nightly misadventures. I also started turning on, and keeping on, the lights. This man’s wife was a saint and on more than one occasion she came over to apologize for her spouse’s behavior, but apparently he had been making himself a nuisance all up and down his side of the street. One neighbor who lives all the way up at the top of the hill at the end of the block called him “the Grouch”. Fitting.

Our new neighbors are far cooler. They’ve been generous and kind and obviously have a way better approach to property issues. They talk and see if we can come up with a mutual solution. They also live here in the first half of the year, only, preferring to move to their other home up north where the summers are, as yet, not so dauntingly humid. We’re grateful for them, for sure.

What does all this have to do with outdoor lights? Well, to me, the biggest deterrent to shenanigans of any kind is a well lit exterior. It prevents all but the stupidest people from attempting to gain access to the house and grounds and though we have had other troubles over the years, we’re certainly much less likely to deal with sneaks and peeping toms, if their actions are on display under spotlights. Sometimes, the best defense really is a good offense. That and a host of bright lights causing every shadow to vanish instantly. I’ve not come to cameras yet, and I may never do so. My brother has one of those camera doorbells and we definitely came close one year to having one, too, mainly so that we could know when packages were delivered, but such things are extravagances. The best part of having smart bulbs in place is that I can change their color manually, so that when proselytizers or Jehovah’s Witnesses come looking for new souls, I can adjust (our house is white) the lights to blood red or venomous green to frighten them away.

I admire the judge and his audacious use of a shotgun, but there are subtler ways of deterring pests. Smart bulbs are cheap and effective and they can, with fences, end up keeping old coots off the property.