Res Ipsa Loquitur

Now, the first thing you have to understand for this story to make sense is that to a hillbilly, land is sacred. I've always figured that was because this area was largely settled by the dispossessed....Irish, Welsh, Cherokee and so on. At any rate, it hasn't been all that long ago when killing someone who had messed with your property was considered justifiable homicide.

Anyhow and anyway, I had a great-aunt that I just adored. She looked just like Mrs. Santa Claus....plump and always laughing. She made the best chicken-n-dumplings I ever ate. Her house, like her person, was always neat as a pin...and filled with knick-knacks and frilly doilies. She was one of the kindest, nicest relatives I knew, wouldn't hurt a fly....or so I thought.

She and her husband owned a piece of property out our way....nice little farm that had been in the family since it was homesteaded back in the 1830's (and that I now own, but that's another story). But not too long after her husband passed away, my dad, who was helping her keep an eye on the place, discovered that one of the adjoining neighbors had moved their common fence way over the property line.....taking up much of a large hayfield.

Now while it is true that many of those old property lines aren't too accurate, it was the general community opinion that this jackass was trying to take advantage of a widder-woman....and that didn't sit too well with my great-aunt. She got my dad to take her down there to see what had been done, and as chance would have it, the neighbor was down there. My dad said she lit into him like a mad hornet, calling him every name in the book and ending her ass-chewing with "You son-of-a-bitch, if I had a gun I'd kill you where you stand."

Mrs. Santa Claus was pissed.

Luckily no one had a gun and the whole mess ended up in court where the neighbor got an ass-chewing from the judge and was made to move the fence. Think the neighbor learned his lesson? Wrong.

My dad eventually bought the place from my great-aunt, and it's now passed to me. But my dad still helps keep an eye on it, and not too long after the title had been recorded in my name he discovered that the neighbor had been on my property. The jackass had cut a large cedar and used it for a gatepost right there in plain sight. You'd think he'd know better than to mess with the females in my family.

I told my dad to let it be know that if I ever caught that jackass on my property, I'd shoot him. And if any more trees were cut, he'd find himself in court so fast it'd make his head spin....where he would be paying 7 times the worth of the trees under Arkansas law.

End of problems with the neighbor.

I think my Aunt Omie would've been proud of me.