Wannaskan Almanac for Tuesday, October 6, 2026 Good...Nay Boors

 "A good neighbor is a found treasure," is an old Chinese proverb. Another classic is "Good fences make good neighbors," from Robert Frost's poem Mending Wall, though it is often used to mean connection rather than isolation.  

Today I am looking at the opposite.  What makes a bad neighbor?  I came up with this idea as some youngsters (easily too young for a drivers license) were ripping around on an extremely noisy and cheap side by side next to my house.  Now I am not trying to be cantankerous, but there is certainly a bunch of laws (and silence) being broken by those kids.  

The noise sounded like an '80s snowmobile with no muffler.  They raced by, ignoring the traffic laws, and then stopped just a little bit down the road.  Unsure if they had disturbed the peace enough, they revved the motor over and over.  Satisfied, their unhelmeted and undeveloped heads proceeded on down the street.  I guess my house was not the only stop on their tour.  

I wandered out, hoping to get a picture of those little rascals for my photo album.  Sadly they were too quick.  While outside I noticed that the people across the street had moved their personal watercraft and trailer over beside my house.  There they set up a tent to cover the vehicles and pounded a nice big spike into my yard to hold the tent down.  They had obviously been working on the PWC's and didn't want to run the risk of spilling hazardous fluids or leftover parts onto their own property.  They were good people though.  They left a half dozen beer bottles in my yard, which shows a lot of integrity to avoid polluting the street!

A couple of days later they found new ways to be annoying.  For one, they parked one of their cars right on the corner, which blocks the ability to see if anyone is coming when trying to utilize the road.  Bravo neighbors!  This has kind of become necessary because they have about ten families living in their home, and each family needs a driveable vehicle and a junk one for storage.  

Why would you care to see around the corner?

They have also parked their really nice trailer and truck right next to my house.  To make sure they are maximizing the annoyance, they are facing the wrong direction, don't have the trailer hooked up, and have no plates on the trailer.  I mean, if you are going to break one law you might as well break them all!  

Eventually they moved the PWC's.  Thankfully they left their bottles for us to clean up.  They decided to leave us one more present though.  The wind had been kind of strong, so they left a block on my yard which they had been using to keep one side of the tent down.  I am glad that they did not strain themselves trying to lift it.  

Now I know what you might be thinking.  If they are breaking all those laws and causing such disturbances then the police sill surely put a stop to it.  I have seen the police drive by all that mess and violations, but unfortunately they do seem to be somewhat blinded to it all.  Perhaps the sun gets in their eyes as they turn the corner there.  Or it is also a possiblity that with 300 people living in that house they are related to one of them.  You can't ticket your relatives you know.  

Finally, let me get to the point.  If you don't have neighbors like this in your town, then you are missing out.  Please submit your town name below and we will send you some of ours.  We don't want to be greedy and keep all these whacky neighbors to ourselves!