LOVE THY NEIGHBOR.

Zinnias and Butterfly
Years ago, I had dinner with a female friend—Robin Flores. She came to our
home, and we went to town in our car.  She was amazed by how many people waved to me as we passed. It was summer, people were out. She had been under the
impression that everyone hated us. I never said they did. I am a
friendly person, always have been, and wave to people. Maybe they may
hate me but they have never made any overt expressions of it. There was
a group of retired men who hung out down the road. I always waved to
them and they would wave back. On occasion, as I would pass, Lenny was
there with them. You could sense that he was poisoning any positive
opinion they had of me. However, I believe they knew what a trouble maker he was
and they seemed to wave a tad more vigorously when he was there with
them. Sort of a passive aggressive way of putting him down. You could
sense by their body language, that he was forcing himself on them.

ROAD RAGE?????

ROAD RAGE

This was all becoming time consuming. Lenny was retired and had free
time to invest being a presence. We ignored him. He would regularly try
to engage us in a confrontation similar to what we believe his son is
doing now. We did our best to ignore him but he
couldn't seem to let go. We would regularly find fruit on our drive...
oranges, plums and peaches. They could have been easily been rolled
down
the drive from his property. It occurred regularly. He was being a
bully.  If we had company he would come out and randomly discharge his guns. On one of the visits a friend Hillary Jay and her husband Bruce Benjamin made, they
witnessed the gun fire while we were having a casual lunch on our front
porch. It really spooked them.  When my sister Colleen Rogal and her
daughter Maria visited, he did the same thing while we ate outside. It is creepy being the object of someone's obsession. His main purpose was to harass us enough o give up the right of way and put in our own road.  We believe his inability to be rational was fueled by our rejection of his affections.

ART HEALS

The Pond

Along with the walking meditation, I began to read. Leor had suggested
many books that all seem to strike a chord. Like the phrase, "when you
are ready to learn, the teachers will appear". I read many of Joseph
Campbell's Works from "Origin of the Myth" to "The Hero with a Thousand
Faces" etc.. I was living a morality tale, a passion play of sorts.
Where
understanding what personal power was and how to use it.  I learned if
you want to know what scares other people, pay attention to what they
use to try to scare you.

PATH FINDER

The Path

There was a lingering embarrassment that we both had for having paid 
our neighbor for anything. But I learned a lot about lawyers and how 
they operate. We were very aware of how we were being perceived. Those 
big bad city boys were kicking sand in the eyes of this innocent, naive 
country boy. That was so far from the truth. But since when does Truth 
have anything to do with Man's Laws.

A WASTE ?????

Our mailbox on  the ground next to Road

We were so bewildered by all these events. Like deer caught in the
headlights of an oncoming car on a busy road. This was all during the
period when the Rt 78 bypass was being built...Route 78 has a
Hellertown exit. You could drive to NYC in as little as over an hour.
There seemed to be this mantra of "the outsiders are coming, the
outsiders are coming". It was a real education and a bit spooky to
see how ready the Natives were to demonize the Outsiders. The
Outsiders, us included, were portrayed as unscrupulous and shifty.

" YOUR SON"?????

copy of front and back of  Lower Saucon Township Police calling card ,1992

We were punch drunk. Bewildered beyond anything we had expected. We
were feeling more and more like strangers in a strange land. This
whole experience was beyond belief. We were sued by the dead, sued for
something that doesn't exist. Had our mailbox taken down to harass us.
People were distancing themselves from us. This is when we started to
discover how friendly "gay friendly" was. Most of the gay people we
knew were so filled with spite that fostering any empathy was an alien
concept. The New York thing versus the Country Gay only fostered
animosity. The defensives were challenging. Dealing with chips on their
shoulders was an obstacle. We were working professionals dealing with
the obsession of a retired, directionless  spurned lost soul whose
delusions
were only fueled by our settlement. Giving the dog a bone wasn't what
he wanted.  If
he could not play a positive role in our lives, he would
play a negative one. That way he could maintain some interface.

GAS LIGHTING ?

We had received a reply from Common Ground, the mediation service, and
the woman said that our neighbor refused to go.This past Summer of 2010 we contacted a mediation service and requested that our neighbor's son, Jesse, who inherited the property and moved into the house, to discuss his motive for his harassing behavior and he also refused to talk. On Sunday April 4, 1989, there was
a message left on out tape machine by an obviously coached kid saying
"I want to order a Pizza-pussy, pussy, pussy, pussy". You could hear
adults laughing in the background and they hung up. Little did we know
that this was a taunt for what was to happen.

Mail or Male Call?

The ink wasn't even dry on the check that was used to pay our 
nemses when we received a letter. Little Lenny sent us a letter 
certified registered mail dated Feb. 28, 1989. 
The letter was kind of sad. It had a few typos and was written in quasi 
legalese. The letter used words like "heretofore" and "aforementioned". 
The letter even had initials "dar" like he has a secretary. We suspect 
it was written by his daughter in law "Debbie" who I had been told 
"writes just like a Lawyer" by Ron at the Mobile gas station. The 
letter starts 
out with the phrase "due to the ever increasing deterioration of our 
relationship as neighbors". Which is queer since we had NO relationship 
with him at all, no civil interaction for years. So how could something 
that 
doesn't exist, deteriorate?