Dr. Kendall Crowns

At my new home in Texas, the backyard opened up into a field.

The one side of the house faced a roadway with a neighbor across the street, and the other side faced an empty lot.

I really only had the one neighbor on one side.

And on the day I moved in, I was talking to the builder when my new neighbor walked up.

He was kind of a short, elderly man with gray-white hair.

He was wearing a white t-shirt, suspenders, and blue jeans.

The builder said, Hey, Doc, this is your new neighbor.

And the old man turned to me and he said, So I hear tell you're a doctor.

Well, they call me Doc.

And I said to him, Well, nice to meet you, sir.

That's interesting.

And they call me Kendall.

And from that moment on, that is how our relationship was.

He was unpleasant and sometimes aggressive, trying to always tell Beth or me how to handle our house or our yard or things like that.

He would tell us we couldn't plant trees, have a fence.

He was always frustrated when we wouldn't listen to him.

And when he didn't get his way, he would try to cite his own obtuse version of the HOA rules.

And then, if he didn't get his way, he would write up a lengthy complaint and turn them in to the HOA to try and get us in trouble.

The HOA would come by and investigate, and they never found that we had any real violations.

One example of this is we had a shed built that was one inch too close to the property line based on the HOA rules.