Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood Doesn’t Exist Anymore

 Al Ritter

Mr. Rogers was certainly an iconic TV host of his time. He constantly extolled the good in people and tried to instill those morals in the adolescents that watched his shows. Fred Rogers certainly had a poly-anna view of life and many of the talk show hosts of the day tried to show that.

Sadly that was a harbinger of things to come as America was hardening right before our eyes. The mocking nature of the talk show hosts went right over Mr. Roger’s head, but the writing was on the wall, and people started to see him and those like him as old fashioned and whose moralistic view was somehow outdated.

When I was a child and growing up on a farm on the outskirts of Baltimore things were of a simple nature back then. If a neighbor had a need or a problem, his friends always came to help. Of course the neighborhood was much smaller and closer knit back then and everyone worked for a common cause…to elevate themselves to a better way of life.

I’m not saying the extremely wealthy weren’t in the neighborhood, but they were far and few between. Our neighborhood was mostly working middle class. Sadly times changed and the farms were cut up into smaller parcels and housing started to flourish. By the early 70’s houses in the general area had doubled. People were moving out of the city at that point for a slice of the rural life.

Unfortunately they brought their urban attitudes with them, and the decline started soon after.

One by one farms started to disappear and so did the comradery that came along with that style of life.

To give you an example, we had this older man that lived next door who owned about 10 acres give or take. As an adolescent I would sneak through his hedgerow and go to visit. He was a funny guy of small stature and as I grew older we would banter back and forth about little things and we both enjoyed each other’s company immensely. Eventually he passed away and after a few years his wife passed also and the house was sold off to a young couple. It wasn’t until 20 years later I found out that Mr. Miller was actually Admiral Miller in charge of Battleship task forces in WWII. It gave me a new found respect for a man that never put on any airs for me, he was just my buddy.

All the houses in the neighborhood went through this transformation one by one. Some houses were purchased by nice caring people but you could see the plight of the neighborhood was sealed by the 90’s. Our property was no different, Dad divorced Mom and split the property into two parts, one plat 5 acres and the other 23 acres. By this time I was married with a family of my own and living in another town, but after my own divorce I found myself moving back into the 5 acre section originally deeded to my mother.

It was tough to see how the neighborhood had changed and how calloused the new owners had become. One farm 1/8 mile away had fallen into the hands of a ruthless son-in-law whose wife had recently passed from cancer, and within 1 year through high priced lawyers he had wrestled it out of a land conservation status and developed it into 50 some homes.

The neighborhood had fallen! This was the beginning of the end. One neighbor that I used to watch out for, I used to plow his driveway in the winter free of charge, and loan him tools from time to time, and generally helped him whenever he asked, because he and his wife were elderly, suddenly turned on me in 2018. We had experienced heavy rainfalls that year, but a year before he had embarked upon a concealed project to divert water runoff around his property and aimed 7 pipes directly to my property. When questioned he claimed it was all done according to county permit regulations. Later I found out that he had lied to me and had never gotten permits for what he did.

This was the first real punch in the face I received from a neighbor that I thought was a friend and as a result, I have never spoken to him again.

The 23 acre plat that Dad retained eventually went to another neighbor who was like an older brother to me. He had transformed that property into something we could never afforded, and it was great to have a true friend next door. Unfortunately times change and people die as did Bill, prematurely at age 63. His widow bravely stayed a few more years even though the upkeep on the property was staggering. About 6 landscape guys were on the property two to three days a week to keep the property pristine and keep the fences mended.

Sadly the property was sold to a man who had first settled on a price he wanted to pay, only to offer her less 7 days before settlement, and he actually bragged to me about it! The doctor is a prominent spinal surgeon in town who thought he could take care of this property himself. Nothing could be farther from the truth as the once pristine $2 million dollar property had now been transformed into and overgrown unkept $1 million dollar property inside of 3 years. He is an antagonistic person that constantly tries to get the upper hand. He badgers me once a month at least by text and has turned into the worse neighbor I have ever had.

It's really sad when you have lived on a family property for 49 years and a new bordering neighbor moves in and makes demands of you and tells you what you can and can’t do on your own property, all the while telling you what poor shape your property is in, when his is far worse.

What is the answer? What is the fix? I’m not sure I have the answer to that, but what a do know is that people have become cold calloused and calculating. Their intent as a neighbor is to find a solution to their direct problems regardless how it will affect their neighbor right next door.

“Neighbor be damned, I am doing what I want to suit me”

Toto we aren’t in Kansas or Mr. Roger’s neighborhood anymore!