I was hoping the next-door neighbor
was going to build a community pool
in his front yard after a hard maple
tree died in the tiered section of the

yard. You see, we are half of an ass-
ociation, our half simply being a state,
county, township neighborhood with
access to the Big Lake being the only

commonality in our part the association.
The other half of the association is a
homeowners’ association with a ton of
rules and regulations. Some of the people

living there didn’t like going to the
beach with the few renters in our half
of the association, never calling the
renters riffraff but, you get the pic-

ture. It’s called territorial imperative.
They managed to scare enough of our
half of the association to voting with them
so renters couldn’t use the beach access.

That, of course, is unbinding for our
part of the association because we are
just a neighborhood under the rules of
the state, county and township. So,

while the few renters can still go to
the beach in spite of the umbrella assoc-
iation bylaws, some might feel intimi-
dated, so I thought the neighbor could

build the swimming pool specifically for
them and as the members of the home-
owners’ association drove by on the street
that leads to the gate for beach access,

they would see the renters frolicking in the
swimming pool to which members of the
homeowners’ association were not invited.
Instead, environmentalist that he is, he

just planted trees in his yard, which is
fine, too, because it’s good for the envi-
ronment and the renters still have access
to the Big Lake where they can frolic under

the noses of the hoity-toity. This is espec-
ially true now with the high waters having
washed away a lot of the beach, so they can
be quite cozy, environmentally good too.