[Jeff Higgins]

Long gone, but the family behind us, through our thankfully well developed hedge, were affectionately know as "the Bundys". Married with Children. The dad was a roaring alcoholic long haul truck driver. When he was away, mom could be heard in the wee hours of the morning banging some random dude on the trampoline in the back yard.

The older son was a known thief, who one of my other neighbors once held at gunpoint while awaiting the arrival of the police after the kid had broken into his motorhome. For the umpteenth time.

The daughter was an adolescent slut with big boobs who loved to go braless in her dad's wife beaters. She propositioned me, and every other able bodied male in the neighborhood.

"Uncle Fester", Mr. Bundy's brother, lived in the back yard in a camp trailer and worked as a bouncer in a dive bar. Dead ringer for the guy on The Adams Family.

I wound up shooting their unleashed, unfenced, out of control pit bull mix who freely roamed the neighborhood, and had bitten several kids. That rather upset Mr. Bundy, who came over to kick my ass. This was way back when I was in my 30's, still fit, and still working out on the bags. I pounded his drunken ass like a tent stake, he wound up being arrested, and I secured a restraining order that kept him from even returning to his home.

It gets even weirder - in the end, we shook hands, and he came to consider me his best friend in the neighborhood. He wound up losing the house, as he was clearly in way over his head. I actually felt bad about that. Turned out to be a really nice guy, but just didn't have the tools to do much better than he did. Picked the wrong trailer trash wife, was gone too much to supervise her or her raising of the kids, so all of that became an ongoing disaster. I hope he was able to somehow escape all of that, even though, in the end, he is somewhat responsible at least for the miscreant kids. Still, I wish him well.

The son wound up convicted as an adult while a juvenile, and I have no idea what became of the daughter, beyond that she got knocked up by some kid before he left for boot camp. Hopefully he "did the right thing". The mom, I could not care less. She seemed to be the origin of all of their problems.