A few months after I escaped from the service, we had rented a duplex. Now this here duplex was a converted army barracks (just what I needed!), that had a thin plasterboard or something right down the middle. You could hear what people were THINKING on the other side! Since our bedrooms were only inches from theirs, we could easily hear them talking. One night when we all were in our beds, the bride next door said to her husband, "I think they can hear us." Hubby said, "Aw no they can’t, Doug what time is it?" I said, "10:15!" It sure did quiet over there after that.

        About a year or so later we moved into a house in an oil company camp where all the houses looked just alike. One time very late at night a supervisor came in from a long time out on a drilling rig. He went into the living room, took off his clothes and walked into the bedroom planning to take a bath when after hearing a woman screaming, he discovered he was in the wrong house! He got out of there a lot quicker than he came in!

        Later on, in a town where we were living, there was a "Saturday Night" burglar who was sneaking into houses AFTER people who came from honky-tonking. (That is night clubbing to you non-rednecks). The local paper always described what the burglar had stolen. We had neighbors who were victimized by ole 'Saturday Night' burglar, but they were really embarrassed when the paper revealed that the burglar had gotten a total of $1.15!

        A couple of years after we moved to Dallas, we had neighbors who had twins who were about 16 or 17 yrs old... One was a boy and the other was a girl. They were real nice folks and the kids were great too. But the boy was a little bit wild as boys that age naturally are. One night the boy came home AFTER his curfew. He took his shoes off before he snuck in so he wouldn’t make any noise, but unbeknownst to him, their cat sneaked in the door with him. Now they had a 'guard' dog that stayed inside the house. The dog started barking something fierce and chasing that cat all over the house and destroying a couple of lamps in the process. Frank, the father, jumped up out of bed grabbing his shotgun cause of all the noise he thought he was in dire danger...He switched on the lights and there stood pore little ole Don, the son, holding his shoes up in the air! He said, "Don't shoot...It's me, your son!"

        For some strange reason which I have never figured out, and AFTER our kids had done been married and we had one of those empty nests, my wife decided we needed a LARGER house! So we wound up in a much larger house (and a damn swimming pool). About 10 or 15 years later some new neighbors had moved in right next door and the man came over one day to announce that my fence was 4 (four!) inches inside HIS property! I think the horrified look on my face scared him plum away because he moved away shortly thereafter.

        In October of 2002, I moved to my current dog house. I had been leasing it out for many years, but decided to downsize and escape from that swimming pool. Have you ever moved from a 'big' house to a 'little' house less than half the size? The following spring, I discovered that I had a neighbor who mowed his lawn in the DARK without a light of any kind, not even moonlight!

        It has been pretty dull around here lately... Should I move again into a more exciting neighborhood?