Don't Mess with OUR 'Hood

In my neighborhood, we all have a fair amount land and the houses are rather spaced apart but I know most, if not all, of my surrounding neighbors and many heading up to the end of the street. And if I don't know them, I'm 99% positive they know who I am (walking a dog twice a day, every day for 8 years has that effect).

I had just finished watching a movie on Saturday night and I hear my neighbor (S1) yelling. Usually if he goes on a bender it's an all night affair but he had been quiet until then (10pm). I get up and watch to see what he's doing from the side door. He's walking back to his truck from the end of the driveway. WTF??? He walks back up the driveway and shines a light down the side walk. ??? I walk to the other side of the house and look out another window and see someone laying down in my other neighbors (S&L's) yard. S1's light hits him and he runs up S&L's driveway heading for the woods.

I throw my shoes on, grab a light, and head out the door. I can hear him crashing through the brush but it's too dark to see him or which way he went. I scan the area for a bit until I hear S1 talking to someone. I head over the other side of the yard and discover him talking with another neighbor (of the same name), S2. S2 is a state trooper. S2 says his wife saw four kids heading up the road with bats and bash a mailbox near their house.

I stick around long enough to get the story and that S1 was just getting home when he saw these characters hiding in the lawns. As I am heading back down the sidewalk in front of my house I see someone walking  towards me. It's K, from 3 doors down. She and her husband were just getting home when they saw someone lingering around their yard. K's husband stopped the kid and started questioning him, while K was trying to figure out if something was going on in the neighborhood.

By the time we were heading back to the house the police show up and start looking around and head off to the side street that runs behind us.

I don't know if they caught the little buggers but the knuckleheads were some stupid:

• Our street sees a lot of speeders so it's patrolled regularly by the police. 
• The college at the end of the street just finished their multimillion dollar boat house and public safety goes by at least twice an hour to check on it. 
• Plus these bozos were doing this at 10:00, let me guess, they had to get in their malice before their 11:00 curfew? If that's the case then they missed it. "Junior, where in the hell were you?" "umm, hiding from the police and a lynch mob in the woods...."

I can't believe just how stupid the youth are in my town. You'd like to think that they just might put 2 and 2 together and figure out that they are under a microscope given the national media they have received for the last 4 months. But alas, apparently our schools don't teach consequences well enough.

Don't mess our 'hood!
g