Saturday, November 2, 2013

I feel sorta bad about this

There has been very little interaction lately with 'the neighbors'.  Honestly I am grateful.  A little over 2 weeks ago, Rumson met Ed at the mailbox and informed him that 'they were having a garage sale Saturday, if we wanted to add some stuff'.  To date I have not seen a garage sale.

I have noticed a large blue tarp on the roof however.  This neighborhood was built all at one time, so everyone tends to re-roof at the same time.  5 or 6 in a year for a couple of years and then 20 years of waiting.  Well next door has a roof that probably was put on late 70's/early 80's.  So I do suspect they have a problem.

It has been extraordinarily quiet.

But what I feel bad about is being happy at their probable misfortune.

Years ago, when Daddy was alive and we'd get weekly, or even daily visits to keep us updated on their lives, Rumson told us that he took a reverse mortgage out on the house.  It was in his parents name.  He told us that he intended to transfer it to his name when both parents died.  Now I am no expert, but I am pretty sure there is a point that the equity is out of the house and the reverse mortgage people expect to get the house.  I don't know exactly when they did this loan, but I suspect it was over 10 years ago.  Daddy died about 4 or 5 years ago and this was done well before he died.

We have been anticipating that day when Dead Mama really does pass on and the Redneck Circus would be forced to move along.  24 years is a long time to have dealt with a less educated and less classy version of the Clampetts.

So yesterday when I got a Zillow alert saying our property has now increased in value (yay we are no longer underwater!)  I went to the web page to see what a recent house sold for down the street, assuming that is why our value went up.  That's when I saw a little blue icon over the house next door.  I clicked on it, thinking they were renting it.  But instead found out, they are in Pre-forclosure.

According to the webpage, they took out a loan 2 years ago and the bank is starting proceedings against them.  The only thing I can figure is that the Reverse Mortgage ran out and they took another loan to try to pay it back.  Since not one person works over there, except for the yardman who pretty much only does my other next door neighbors yard and theirs, I suspect that things are going very badly and I anticipate cop cars in the future.

My concern is once the bank does move them out, Crazy Woman is likely to still be hanging around.  She's spent most of her adult life next door and she is just unstable enough to keep coming there.  I mean she took off on a Baker Act years ago and they just left on vacation, leaving her locked out of the house.  I do worry about Dead Mama.  She is so feeble and mentally vacant these days.  Add the fact that some days I can only tell the difference between she and RumSon by whether or not the person is wearing a shirt.  For the record, he doesn't.  Alcohol has ravaged him, so he looks like an 80 year old woman.

I'm torn.  I feel sorry for them on a human level.  But on the other hand, not having 3-5 trashed cars in my front yard; not having schizophrenia and dementia up close and personal; not having family tragedy acted out like bad Shakespearean drama in the yard/street/neighborhood:  MIGHT just be a pleasant change.

It's a quandary, for sure.