Once, when I was a kid, my father got into a years-long feud with one of our neighbors over — I kid you not — a pile of dirt.
The neighbor in question was a widow who lived across the street from us and had a reputation for being irrationally mean. My folks have told me many times how she used to chase her children around her front yard, beating them with a broom; obviously, this was in those bygone libertarian days before the government was empowered to send out its Welfaremobiles to collect unfortunate children. In any event, the grown-ups on my street did their best to avoid confrontations with her, and I — who at some point had started thinking of her as “The Crazy Lady” — avoided her altogether.
The Great Dirt-Pile Fracas actually began with a real-estate deal. There was an empty lot next door to The Crazy Lady’s place, a lot which belonged, as best as I can recall, to one of her in-laws. The in-law had never done anything with the land, and The Crazy Lady had somehow, over the years, come to think of it as hers.
Then my father bought it, and all hell broke loose.
