When Your Neighbors Are Democrats

I live on a beautiful street in a small town 20 miles from Portland, Maine. Except for one other family besides ours, it's populated by Democrats. It's a dead-end street, so if you enter by mistake you will have to turn around when you understand that fact. Although the house at the end of the street has a long driveway where you could do such a thing, the meanies who live there have posted a sign that says "No Turn-Arounds."

Mrs. Meanie walks her dog, off leash, every day past our house. Often, her giant out-of-control Yellow Labrador tramples through my gardens and pees somewhere on our front lawn. I say nothing, because dogs will be dogs. Besides, neighbors are people we must live with, peacefully one hopes. Yet Mrs. Meanie doesn't share that feeling. 

The other day she started SCREAMING at Mitch for supposedly driving too fast, even though he wasn't. Waving her arms wildly, she shouted, "Slow down!!!!!" with obvious hostility. (Meanwhile her dog was peeing on another manicured lawn.)

Our next door neighbors haven't spoken to us in the 14 years they have lived here. Several others who we were once close with shut us out a few years ago when we put a Susan Collins sign on our lawn, realizing possibly for the first time that we vote Republican. One particularly virulent Democrat whose vast gardens I watered daily for two weeks when she vacationed one hot summer, actually marched over to my house to say, "I don't like the way you think."

Here's the funny part: At the entrance to our street there are two lawns signs. One says, "Love Is All Around," and directly across the street from that, the other says, "Be Nice."