Hey, I've heard of Julia Butterfly; I seem to recall her being in a documentary about living in a tree. Good for her, putting her money (so to speak) where her mouth is! What's the world coming to when you can't even keep a damn basketball hoop in your own driveway? If you're worried about your kids, keep an eye on them instead of making the rest of the world their babysitter.

I can see how traffic danger would be a huge problem in that suburban cul de sac!

/sarc

"Police and Delaware Department of Transportation officials say their hoops, angled toward the street, violate the state's Free Zone law, which prohibits hoops, trees, shrubs and other objects from being within seven feet of the pavement's edge in subdivisions"

Ah, the land of the free.

Way back when I was in the Navy, we had a name for people who gave up one iota of freedom for a *supposed* increase in safety (especially from the govt) we called them pussies, because they gained neither safety nor security but became sheepeople. Whatever happened to "Don!t Tread on Me"?--still a valid concept.

The chick w/ the ponytail sucks.

Did she just tell them to go in the house while pointing a finger at them? Like a mother would do to a 2 year old child? Fuck her.

She backed it up with a threat of arrest for disorderly conduct. The guy called her "Officer," so she's evidently a cop.

So our kids are fat and everyone complains they wont go outside to play.. NO freakin wonder. And yeah little miss pony tail should have been smacked.

We have the same retired douchebags in our neighborhood. What are the kids supposed to do all day, stay inside in play WII basketball? Dog steps on their lawn, they call the police.

That said, how many thousands of tax dollars do you think were spent to remove these dangerous obstacles?

Bald-faced lying government official. "They'll lay it in your driveway." Yeah, for about 10 seconds, then they'll throw it in the back of the truck and tell you that you can come and pick it up. I'd wager that, had they gone to pick it up, it would have already been destroyed.

I think the real issue here, aside from Officer Stick up her Ass, is that an 86 year old man is driving in an area where THERE ARE CHILDREN!

Jesus Christ. Someone take his license away, not the kids' hoops. He probably had a near-miss with a child (or thought he did) when in reality his perception of the whole thing was off. Like the kid was on the other side of the road and he drove into a tree because he had low blood sugar.

Out of all the old people I have known NONE of them were capable of driving safely after about age 80 or sooner. Nana is 85, oma is 87, opa died at 86, Aunt Doris is 86, Great Aunt Millie is like 100...if any of them were behind a wheel I'd fear for everyone's safety within a radius of however many miles are left in the gas tank.

Also, I don't believe most of what they say because it's always like 70% reality, 20% they're making shit up, 10% I can't even understand what they're saying. Entertaining, though. I nod my head in agreement and smile and everyone has a good time. And I always show up with donuts and coffee (when it's my time, I'll go out surrounded by a pile of carbs). Never visit g'ma in the home without donuts.

When you go into some neighborhoods, you find housing that is shockingly bad in terms of upkeep. Yet you never see any enforcement action in those areas for obvious and serious legal infractions.

Yet in this upper middle class burg, our society has resources to commit multiple cops and municipal workers to concerns of...basketball hoops.

Doesn't this suggest we have misallocated resources in our municipalities? What you have, folks, is a situation where government is only flexing its power where its power is not really challenged, or needed, I would add.

Putting it metaphorically, this is a story of the cop ignoring the glowering criminal to harass the spectable-wearing, tie-wearing jaywalker. (In this story, the jay-walkers are a bit pissed, I note.)

Oh, and as long as I am in full rant mode, how about this guy: "Tom Blythe, 86, said he was among several people on the street who complained to the state about the basketball hoops. The children don't watch for traffic, he said, and the number of kids coming from outside the neighborhood to play on the hoops has gotten out of hand."

But he claims his prior work for organized sports shows he loves kids...blah blah blah.

I see another 86 year old guy who spends his time fussing about how the world doesn't run *precisely* in the quite, safe, reassuring way his dying brain wants.

Old fucker expects the parents and kids to keep paying his retirement benefits, of course, but they also better live like he wants, while paying his bills.

Spartee: If comments on Amy's blog had a like button or a thumbs up button, I'd push it for yours :-)

Damn! Gtretchen is right on the money with this one! Get together and pull the old fart's license!

And she smells nice too. What's the essence d'jour?

Old fucker expects the parents and kids to keep paying his retirement benefits, of course, but they also better live like he wants, while paying his bills.

That "old fucker", as you put it, probably spent his youth fighting a war you couldn't even begin imagine or understand.

Show some respect.

What's the big deal?

Didn't this person move into this neighborhood voluntarily, and have a hand in its laws and regulations?

I have little sympathy for people who protest a situation only when it finally gets to them personally.

Thanks Eric - want to share the virtual smelling tech?? Or maybe I know you and you're not revealing your true identity...

Today it's Musc Bleu by Il Profumo:
http://www.luckyscent.com/shop/section/1/item/28910/brand/IL_PROFUMO/Musc_Bleu.html

IRA Darth: I don't care what he did in his life, he is old and probably a dangerous driver and freaks out about things irrationally. I saw my own grandparents' mental faculties decline. They were paranoid as all hell (they accused my dad of stealing a can of 20 year old paint out of the garage...) and had two or three stupid accidents (That boulder came out of nowhere!). Nothing severe but their license was pulled before that point.

Maybe "old fucker" isn't the nicest phrasing but I bet he is nosy and complains about everything. Again. I don't care if you're Mother Teresa - if you're acting like a jerk then you should get called on it. The guy sounds like a trouble maker.

"When you go into some neighborhoods, you find housing that is shockingly bad in terms of upkeep. Yet you never see any enforcement action in those areas for obvious and serious legal infractions."

Spartee, you know damned well that the enforcement of law in those cases is racist.

End of story.

I can't watch the entire thing. Makes me so damn mad!

IRA Darth, he may also have been a bank robber or pehophile priest. As I have no clue, I will go on what is in front of me--another old dude waving his arms about "problems" that are nothing of the sort. If you have other facts, let me know. If you are conjecturing wildly, well, don't expect any forelock tugs from me.

I don't presume that every guy in his 80s was "probably" Sgt. York. I think I am "probably" on more solid ground with my assumption than you are.

"A man's got to know his limitations."

Gee, Spartee, do you think calling someone "an old fucker" is particularly polite? And does it matter if he had been a bank robber, or even pedophile priest if he's done his time? given that he's not in prison, I'm guessing that's a safe guess.

And then there's the whole issue of having poles in those locations being against the law.

"...And does it matter if he had been a bank robber, or even pedophile priest if he's done his time? given that he's not in prison..."

Yes, it matters. This is why Martha Stewart can't go duck hunting. Sure, she did her time, but America MUST KEEP PUNISHING and never, ever forgive.

It protects America, and the children, and ... Jesus, probably. But definitely the children.

So rejoice that the police are anti-hoop-transgression.

I personally hate the sound of a basketball dribbling anywhere near me. Schools and parks have basketball courts that are actually made for that. The idiot behind me has a cement backyard and put up a basketball hoop. Now when I go to enjoy the nice backyard, I am literally driven nuts by the noise, day and night. I am with the old geezer here, and not for the little f'ers safety

"Now when I go to enjoy the nice backyard, I am literally driven nuts by the noise, day and night. I am with the old geezer here, and not for the little f'ers safety"

I sympathize, but aren't there noise ordinances, surely? Most suburban areas have. If someone keeps making a noise, especially in the middle of the night but possibly even during the day, you probably already have other more logical recourses than to try ban basketball hoops. Which wouldn't make sense anyway, since even if you got the hoop removed, he could find some other way to make noise, and if you banned hoops instead of noise, you're out of luck. Your problem is the noise, not basketball per se, and it's something I tend to agree with, because much as I love liberty, making a noise in a suburban area can reasonably be said to constitute harm (e.g. you can't study, it impacts work, you can't sleep - and some people do night shifts, so even daytime noise is a problem). I hate noisy people. When people live together in closed spaces, they have to scale make and not make noise. Noise negatively affects those around you materially. Occasional is OK. But if someone really wants to make a noise constantly they should go live out in the boonies. I honestly suggest finding out about local noise ordinances if it's really bothering you that much.

But private property is private property. You should not be able to tell others what to do or put on their private property unless it directly harms others (and no, 'lower property values' doesn't count). Anything less is oppression, not freedom.

"The children don't watch for traffic"

Wow, welcome to 'driving in suburbia'. You telling me you have to actually drive slowly and watch out for kids in the street now!? Wow, I never would ever have thought such a thing, this is something totally new and unheard of.

"Gee, Spartee, do you think calling someone "an old fucker" is particularly polite?"

No. I was not trying to be polite. I was flexing my Internet Tough Guy Muscles, located in my fingers.

"And does it matter if he had been a bank robber, or even pedophile priest if he's done his time?"

No more or less than if he fought in WWII/Korea. That is, not at all in this instance. If we are talking about issues where combat vets have unique personal knowledge that experience brings, yes, it matters. Local zoning debates though? Pu-leaze.....

I have a ton of sympathy for the old guy. I moved into my neighbourhood when it was new and there were no children living there. It was nice and quiet, now there are a ton of them playing in the road, leaving their crap (and garbage in the street), and running all over people's property. Their parents don't watch them and instead of having them play in their backyards, they play on the road and their neighbours front property. My solution to keep them off my property includes plants with razor sharp edges and ground cover that attracts bees so they won't sit on it. And we also have a huge park 2 blocks away...parents are too lazy to get off their fat asses to take them there (or watch them here either). I don't like gov't sticvking its nose everywhere but I dislike uncontrolled kids just as much.

Catherine, I'm not sure where you live, but surely you can't really expect there to be no kids playing around in *suburbia*?

We used to go over to the school if we wanted to play. There's probably some law against being unsupervised on school property now.

What the heck are kids supposed to do? I wait, somebody scores or they take the ball out of bounds. What's the problem? Other than them possibly wasting ten or fifteen seconds of my life. The kids around here are OK. They don't destroy my things. I don't give them a hard time.

They could be hanging around the mall smoking or stealing things. I'd rather see them playing basketball.

If I were them, I'd put in for a permit to expand my driveway. Then put in the driveway so that the pole is at at 1 inch from the right of way area. And then paint the markers so that they end right at the end of the right of way.

Then encourage the neighbors to do the same.

What would they do then?

Oh, and a comment on the video said that they had not heard from the government on their reply to the letter.

That tells me that it was not a settled mater.

Ol' Mr. "Get-Off-My-Lawn" could have addressed the problems directly with the children or with their parents if they (children) happened to be on his property. Now, he's going to have a whole neighborhood full of pissed-off kids who are going to have to find other activities with which to occupy their time - activities which may or may not involve placing flaming bags of excrement on Ol' Mr. "Get-Off-My-Lawn's" front porch.

I can't help but think of a story I read a long time ago:

Two old men were in a barbershop, and the customer was complaining to the barber..."These damn kids just don't stay off my lawn. They jump my hedges, lose their toys, they run and shout and make all kinds of noise and have no regard for other people's property. What kind of hooligans are they turning into?"

To which the barber replied:

"Those aren't little hooligans, its cops chasing robbers, heroes battling villains, its cowboys and indians going over the untamed world of the wild west, its space marines battling martians on an uncharted world. Don't you remember?"

I'm sympathetic to the notion of protecting one's personal property. I can be a bit territorial myself...but I have not forgotten my childhood. I ran wild through the neighborhood with the other boys I knew, we jumped the walls, scaled the fences, we rode our bikes through the muddy patches that appeared when the rain was to heavy, many were the bushes that were damaged over the years as we waged epic battles in our childrens games.

Just because I've outgrown them, doesn't mean I have to forget them, or remember them any way but fondly. And I hope that when the day comes that I'm an 86 year old man, with a nice house in suburbia, I won't be bitching about kids on my lawn, I hope I'm that old man that the kids can't wait to see, because I have some story to tell that they've never heard, some cookies to offer, and a great big lawn that is just perfect for their own battles imitating whatever transformers ripoff is popular then.

Look some people don't like kids, I get that. Fine. But if you want to live in suburbia, you're going to be around them and you'll have to make concessions to the existence of neighbors, and while children may be taught responsibility, it does not grow in them overnight, if it did, we'd call them short adults, not children. Most of them will grow into it, but all of them will damage a few lawns while they do it, the old bastard should realize it isn't the end of the world.

And before anyone says I'm being disrespectful...um...yeah, I'll say so. I had grandparents, and they never acted so petty.

That video pissed me off.

Once upon a time in Ancient Greece, the city of Athens had a tradition whereby they would occasionally, as a city, vote for whichever citizen they believed should be exiled. The individual didn't have to have committed a crime, he just had to be considered undesirable.

I can't help but think that neighborhoods like the one in this video could benefit from that, a great way to get rid of the Tom Blythes in our midst.

Robert, very well said!

Frankly I wonder by what right they seized the property. Uprooting it based upon state law...that is understandable, if reprehensible, but by what right do they remove private property from private property and take it away with them?

"Those aren't little hooligans, its cops chasing robbers, heroes battling villains, its cowboys and indians going over the untamed world of the wild west, its space marines battling martians on an uncharted world. Don't you remember?"

I sure do remember. When I was that age, the whole neighborhood was our oyster. Running through people's yards was SOP, as long as we didn't break things. The difference between then and now is: If I tripped over a neighbor's front steps and sprained my ankle, my parents were very unlikely to sue the neighbors over it. Sigh.

"That "old fucker", as you put it, probably spent his youth fighting a war you couldn't even begin imagine or understand."

Not A Chance!
Anyone that actually had a serious role in that war wouldn' be behaving like that. Those men & women didn't make that sacrifice to create a police state where personal property rights means nothing; exactly the opposite. That man deserves to be dis-respected and then some.

"If I were them, I'd put in for a permit to expand my driveway. Then put in the driveway so that the pole is at at 1 inch from the right of way area. And then paint the markers so that they end right at the end of the right of way.

Then encourage the neighbors to do the same.

What would they do then?"

Modify the ordinance to expand the right of way area by 2"

When I was a kid, we knew which yards we could run in and which we couldn't. We could be on school property unsupervised. And (as someone else said) our parents didn't sue everyone in sight if we got a little banged up.

And that's the reason I don't want anyone I don't know in my yard. They step in a gopher hole, and next thing I know I'm on the street.