Once, I lived next door to an AR-15. Did I feel safe? No. In fact, I ended up moving in order to get away from it.
It was our first house, situated about thirty city blocks south of our previous apartment in what is known as The Avenues. Back in the Sixties and Seventies, The Avenues was the place to be—widely hailed as the hippest neighborhood between Boulder and Haight-Ashbury. There were no assault weapons in The Avenues, just peace-loving Eloi that sang folk songs and tossed Frisbees in Reservoir Park. I was happy in The Avenues–but, alas. I couldn’t afford to buy property there.
What I liked about the house we bought was the deep back yard that featured half a dozen mature fruit trees, a grape vine and raspberry patch. It bordered upon an irrigation ditch, from which I was entitled to draw two hours worth of water once a week—enough to irrigate a large vegetable garden. I immediately invested in a used Rototiller.
Next door lived Mrs. Madsen, an elderly widow who no longer was able to cultivate her back yard. She asked if I would like to do so, and I readily agreed. I bought myself a straw hat, overalls, and began saving up for a John Deere tractor.
Sadly, even before I could harvest my first wheat crop, Mrs. Madsen died. Her house went up for sale, and next thing I knew, a large man arrived in a large black truck and commenced unloading armloads of miscellaneous weaponry and ammunition. I began to feel a bit uneasy—even more so after my new next-door neighbor—let’s call him Rambo—announced that in his opinion, “Hitler had some good ideas.”
Rambo had a dog that wandered hither and yon, pooping in various yards. It never pooped in mine, but because I was Rambo’s nearest neighbor, he automatically assumed I was the one behind the complaint from Animal Control–shredded fragments of which were promptly deposited on my doorstep.
Then came the flood. It happened that Rambo lived upstream, and in order to make life miserable for me, he’d divert water from the irrigation ditch for days on end. After overflow from his rice paddy washed away my tomato plants, I lodged a complaint with the irrigation company.
Now there was a time in the West when violating irrigation rules was a serious offense, punishable by a sharp blow delivered against the miscreant’s skull by a shovel wielded by an enforcement officer known as a Ditch Rider. Unfortunately for me, the Millcreek Irrigation Company is run by an elderly group of gentlemen, none of whom are inclined toward assault and battery. The best they could do was send Rambo a notice in the mail, which promptly was forwarded to me in the form of confetti.
To another neighbor, Rambo vowed that he was determined to flood me out. And when that didn’t work, he announced that he was going to burn me out. This was troubling, but not nearly as troubling as the sight of Rambo standing across the fence in full camo, clutching an assault rifle and glowering in my direction. At that point I decided to alert the police, and after a brief consultation with Rambo, I was advised by the investigating officer that my best option was to move.
“ He’s obviously crazy, but I’m afraid we can’t do anything until he shoots you.”
So I packed up and moved, and in leaving I caught sight of Rambo dancing a celebratory jig reminiscent of Adolph Hitler step dancing at Berchtsgaden. I never went back, but I assume that following my hasty retreat, peace returned to the valley—same as when the Ryker brothers succeeded in running the sodbusters out of Wyoming in the alternative ending of “Shane.”
Oh, well. Good news is that I now live in far better place, where my neighbors are all neighborly, children roam freely, and police sirens seldom are heard. Best of all, no one is packing!
Here’s what I learned during my brief sojourn in the Gun Belt: Crazy people love guns, and the more guns a person owns, the crazier he is.