Sold!

Last year, this residence across the street and one house down from ours had a squatter. This case is different, though, in that he was the past owner of the house and was living in the house after foreclosure. I somewhat affectionately referred to him as "lawn man."

We never knew the family and didn't know much about the situation. We do know the wife and kids moved out several years ago. They were the ones who took care of the lawn and he did not mow it after they left. Hence, our nickname of "lawn man." He did not have a car and either walked or took a taxi. We live about a mile out of Bismarck and there are no sidewalks. We theorized he either walked to get on the public bus route or to go to the bar at the edge of town. There was really never any sign of a problem, other than the condition of the lawn and lack of upkeep on the house, and the only time we ever saw him was when he walked across our neighbor's lawn to cut across to the road and or when we were driving and saw him walking the ditch. We don't know if he had a job during this time or not.

The first hint of a problem was on July 4 when we were out on the front lawn starting on our fireworks festivities. Two Burleigh County sheriff's cars showed up and went to the door. Lawn man came out and had what appeared to be heated discussion with the deputies, without raised voices though. It looked like both squad cars left without him. After this there was an orange sticker on the front door, but we never checked it out to see what it was.

Toward the end of October, squad cars showed up again and this time we did see they took him away. Still, we didn't know what was going on.

Nancy later spoke with some ladies from our neighborhood and found out what I mentioned above - at some point the house had been foreclosed on by the mortgage company but he continued to live in the house by entering through a window. The electricity and water had been shut off this summer. The house is in rough shape outside but it was much worse on the inside. For one thing, just imagine living in a house for months without a functioning bathroom!

In January, the house was put on the market at a greatly reduced price. I think it was listed just under $120,000. It did sell within a couple of weeks. I'm guessing it will be on the market again because my hunch is it was bought by a house flipper.

I feel bad about the situation and about not knowing what was happening to a neighbor. Granted, our homes out here are far apart compared to those in Bismarck, but that really shouldn't matter. Heck, we don't even know much about our house neighbors in our side-by-side duplex. Blame it on today's culture, I suppose. Television. Internet. Video Games. A person gets busy with the family and/or both parents are working, and you tend to stay in your house and keep to yourself. I did have the urge several times over the past couple of summers to walk over and offer to mow his lawn but I never actually did.

Hey, maybe I need to start taking home baked caramel rolls and fresh coffee over to some of the neighbors! I am getting more confident about my caramel roll production abilities and am so close to starting home roasting green coffee beans. We'll see. I for sure need to do that for our neighbor across the street - he blew snow off our driveway once this winter.