@Consolation - only PO and the owner of the box have the right to put anything in it. I would be careful with that note and mail it instead of sticking it in the mailbox. On the doorstep - ok.
That had occurred to me also, Bunsen Burner.
Yes, anything that could give the jerk an easy legal opportunity to retaliate should be avoided.
Excellent point, @BunsenBurner . If I write a note, I need to mail it. But some of the newer comments have got me thinking. And the guy doesn’t live a full quarter of a mile away, but probably close to that.
My vote is that you go to the house and say, “hey, I appreciate our conversation the other day. And I was not the one who called the police.”
I do know a thing or two about old and new performance cars and also own one and was hoping to: a) test for reasonableness from the point of view of a car buff/good neighbor and b) maybe glean some information about the car that you could approach the hot rodder and get on his good side by stroking his/her ego. By asking questions and complimenting his/her car, maybe you could come to a truce by using your excellent negotiating skills.
These hot rodders tend to have HUGE egos and they want other folks to stroke them. And if you seem semi-interested in their car(s), then they might be more forgiving with the early weekend morning wake-up calls. Just my $0.02.
Guys like the neighbor annoy me, likely the idiot is running the car with headers only, and doesn’t understand that not everyone likes hearing a 150db or more racket (the kind of noise the OP is describing is basically what you hear at a drag strip with standard engines, not going to describe what an engine running nitromethane sounds like). What morons like him don’t understand is that in the end they end up ruining the fun for everyone. If that really is a race car he shouldn’t be testing it in a residential area like that, it is one thing to let it idle, it is another to rev it, if it is a race car he likely has a trailer and can take it someplace out of the way. If it is a street rod (ie street legal) than he likely has an exhaust system for it but thinks it is ‘cool’ to run it without it (good old JC Whitney used to sell a bypass you could put in the connecting pipe between the headers and the first muffler to allow ‘open running’ in country areas that you could switch back and forth between.
I have dealt with idiots like that, and was kind of nice to live in an area with a lot of gearheads, there was a guy like that who decided it was cool to straight pipe his car (and old Camaro) and it was noisy as hell, and he would go tearing around at night, like 2am 3am, and it was really noisy, would set off dogs, etc. Bunch of us had a talk with him, and told him all the ways that something bad could happen to his car, all kinds of nasty things that could basically trash it, and he got the point, when driving around the neighborhood from that point forward the car had mufflers on it and he drove really slow…(don’t try this at home, folks, among other things, knowing the cops these days, they would ignore him and bust us for harassment or whatnot, back then the cops would laugh if the guy tried to complain, perps have often become victims these days I guess…).
I think you handle it right @op, you made your concerns known. If the guy keeps doing that, I think he will have a lot of complaints against him and eventually will get the idea. The sad part is we have two extremes, people who think they have the right to decide how other people should live for things that shouldn’t be their concern (like the ‘lawn police’ who get upset if people tend to keep their lawn higher than other people, people who paint their houses colors others don’t like, etc) and those who think “It is my home, and I can do anything I want, including having loud parties, burning stuff in my yard, dogs who bark all the time, loud cars/motorcycles” and will tell you “this is the USA buddy, land of the free”, forgetting, of course, others have rights, too, like the freedom not get a headache from a loud stereo and so forth. One thing I recommend, don’t let the guy intimidate you, if he scowls at you, or makes obscene gestures, ignore it, he is looking to get a rise likely.
I am fortunate, I have pretty good neighbors (there is one idiot, whose family could be put in the dictionary under “trash”, but fortunately I don’t have to deal with them, their property only tangentially touches mine). About my only complaint is my neighbors on one side, who love to use their back yard, they love to grill and use a smoker, and when you are eating pretty much vegetarian the smells coming over are torture lol.
@Materof2 , sorry, I will not be going back to speak with him unless it’s necessary. I no longer trust him. It’s obvious he thinks he is doing nothing wrong, and he was happy to shout at me with a group of teens standing nearby. (Whenever he starts up this car, the teen sons’ friends converge on the house. They were there yesterday morning, at 7:52, believe it or not.) If I do contact him again, it will be a short note to say I didn’t call the police and I am happy to discuss the issue. The guy was angry, and he has been a jerk to my other neighbor. Do I really want to knock on his door again? Not particularly, but I also don’t want him thinking I called the police.
I wouldn’t recommend that considering how agitated he was the last time you interacted with him. He’s likely to think you’re lying and if on the off-chance he forgot about it…why remind him?
@Lindagaf :
I would not send him a note, to be honest I doubt very much it would do much. You may want to talk to other neighbors and maybe get together with them to talk about it, with a jerk like that you might need to get people together and then figure out how to deal with the guy, there is power in numbers, plus the idiot can’t complain it is one person who is driving this. If you decide to complain again a group doing it likely would get more attention at the town level as well, one person complaining is a pain in the butt, a group of people complaining is real trouble:)
Well, I may have been hanging out w engineers too long. It just seems like subtracting emotion and judgement to get to a solution would be useful.
Whether you are right or wrong or morally entitled to sic the police on the whole bunch or whether you should involve neighbors — none of that seems particularly relevant to me. You have a problem with a superloud occasional noise. You can either call the police and let them handle it effectively, or not. You can ignore it. You can attempt to negiotiate something, which by necessity requires you to stop thinking right/wrong and move towards works/doesn’t work.
You don’t want to ever engage him again, that’s cool. If that’s your preference, you’ll need to discard thinking he is ginning up a vendetta, because you will be busy ignoring him. If you are going to be worried about that, you have to talk to him to explain about the police. If you don’t want to do THAT (and who would blame you), your recourse for noise is to ignore it, or call the police. If you ignore it, it may not stop. If you call the police it may not stop AND he’ll be pissed (but you’re ignoring him, so you don’t care)
MOst people just want to be left alone. and are not going to firebomb your garage. I may not know much though — as mentioned, my neighbor mowed my whole garden down once! Good luck, and try not to worry. MAybe talk to the police about what to do, at the station, without it being 7:30 am.
@greenbutton , I am really perplexed by your comments. I think you are not reading my comments and are exaggerating what I have written here.
What do engineers have to do with this?
Sic the police on the whole bunch? What? Again, I have never called the police on the guy. I am certainly morally entitled to sleep in on the weekend, and to enjoy the peace and quiet that my Town Code establishes for me. I have reread it, and in short, it prohibits unnecessary and unusual noise that disturbs neighbors. It’s both unusual and unecssary noise, and he does not have the right to disturb the peace of all his neighbors so he can tinker with his rally car.
The super loud occasional noise happens multiple times throughout the week, and every weekend. For at least 18 months now. When should I try to do something about it?
I made it clear I will talk to him again. I said I do not want to go to his door. I have not said I do not want to engage with him EVER again. And as for a vendetta, it’s the teen sons I am worried about. Without boring everyone with other details, it is not unreasonable to think his sons are not above nasty behavior. I suspect he has a violent temper, and I don’t think going up to his door, especially after yesterday, is in my best interest in terms of safety.
Why would I go to the police at 7:30 a.m.? As for going to my neighbor’s in the morning, well, I was awake, and he clearly was too. It was as good a time as any and it helped make my point. If I can say anything good, he did at least apologize for waking me up.
You clearly think I am being petty and spiteful. Thanks for your ideas nonetheless.
You’ve already engaged with him once. If he stops doing the early morning revving as a result of your visit, great. If not, go to the police and make a formal complaint.
She meant see the police during regular hours, methinks. And I think I get the point about engrs…except, greenbutton, those I know would have let the police handle this and tell any woman trying to resolve it alone to do the same. My father’s generation, different story. But back then, it would be the dads.
Have to admit I’m getting whiplash from the back and forth. Give him cookies, don’t give him cookies, police won’t help, get a camera, he won’t do anything, he’s definitely gonna come after you…and some odd reference to a dripping pipe.
LG, what do you think you personally can resolve by contacting him, in any way? Is he a nice, reasonable guy or you tried and next step is working with other neighbors and the authorities? (Which I now see OhMom noted.)
Oh goodness, no, I DID mean go see the police sometime when he’s not making noise, so there can be no mistaken attribution, and you will feel less under attack (and therefore the police might be more useful). I meant only to delineate your choices — talk to the neighbor, or call the police, or livel with the noise. Sometimes we get entangled with right/wrong to the extent we stop problem solving effectively (that’s the engineer comment – DH, my sibs, my family are a bunch of engineers who approach everything as a problem-to-solve. an attempt at levity)
I don’t think you are petty and certainly not spiteful. I wish you only success in a difficult circumstance, and a clear path to quiet mornings