Letters to the Editor
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Dude!
Treat this guy the way a scorned girlfriend or vengeful exwife would. In the wee small hours of a moonless night, slash his tires, break off the side mirrors, pour syrup in the gas tank. Remove the license plates and hide them far, far away, and anything else that can be disabled or removed silently and quickly. DON"T do this if there is a dog involved. Wear gloves! Wear dark clothes and sneaky shoes. Obliterate footprints in any dirt or sand. Guys like this have more than one enemy. When he asks you to repair his car, smile cattily and say "Sorry!" Sorry Carey, this is the real world and people like this are niceness challenged.
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I must say
you have the most articulate and florid vocabulary of any auto mechanice I've ever met. Maybe you should go back to school and be a writer (although, admittedly, you'd make more money as an auto mechanic).
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Listen to your fiancee
There is little I can add to the mountain of sensible advice given by other letter writers, but my two cents are as follows:
I have long noticed how, in movies and television, in fictional stories and real accounts (worse, 're-creations of actual events' on crime shows), there is inevitably a man about to do something that ranges from the foolish to the dangerous, and a woman who is begging him not to. Please, honey, do not confront the ex-con (or pick up the hitchhiker carrying the machete, or go outside where the zombies await...)!
This is not to say that women never do anything stupid or dangerous. I am female and have done such idiocies as giving in to road-rage, pulling over and engaging in a screaming match with another driver.
I'm just saying, in this particular instance, the stereotype applies. Listen to the woman. She has the clear head in this situation.
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ex-con
so you help the guy, the kid ruins your shit, you help the guy, the guy takes you for a free ride in car repairs.
honestly if you confront him he just might punch you in the face or set the raving nieghborhood brats upon the rest of your belongings so here's a thought; forget about it (your not getting the money back, hate to break it to ya), don't do anymore pro bono auto work and keep an eye on your belongings. not so warm and fuzzy but its advice i've had to give my "give you the shirt off his back" dad time and time again after watching him get screwed over by schmucks he cant say no to because they always seem like "good people".
this is why people mind they're own business and don't mingle with they're neighbors now a days.
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pockets of peace
I've already written a letter about what I think the LW should do. This letter is to illustrate what seems likely to happen should the LW follow Cary's advice. It's about a bad neighbor I had.
This neighbor was great when I moved in. He was a young man living with an elderly mother who brought me peanut butter cookies and homemade lemonade while I was unloading the moving van. He had too many dogs too close to my property and too loud, but apart from that, he seemed like a nice guy. We waved at each other. A couple of times, we went over to each other's houses for TV and snacks.
Then the elderly mother died, quickly and brutally after a bout with pancreatic cancer. All was quiet for about two months. Then the son went through some rapid life changes. He bought two giant, expensive cars. He married a bouncy, mean-faced girl who did NOT wave when she passed us. He got more dogs. The dogs got louder, less-well cared for, and were eventually impounded because they were torn up and bloody from fighting with each other. They chewed holes in our wooden fence; the neighbor made jokes about the Tazmanian devil, but did not replace the fence. He paid a large fine to get the dogs back.
Police cars started to become a common fixture in the neighborhood. The neighbor threatened to beat up the lady who had reported his dogs. The dogs escaped, bit a little boy, and were destroyed. He threatened to beat up those people, saying that their little boy should have known to stay away from his dogs. The mean-faced wife appeared with a black eye; then she didn't appear again. The neighbor started spending his days drinking beer on the front porch with his cousin, who happened to be a semi-professional boxer.
He was drunk when he approached me as I was getting into my car. The cousin hung around in the background, like a pit bull attending its master. "You really need to get that tree trimmed," he said, referring to a large tree on my property that has been there for many, many decades.
"Yeah, it's starting to need it," I said.
"I'm serious, if that tree drops any leaves on my property, I'll pour gasoline on it and set it on fire," he said. Then, in response to the expression on my face, "Yeah, you like that? You want your ass kicked, bitch?"
Pro boxer cousin grinned at me. I got in the car, drove away, and called the cops.
The two cops who showed up were gentlemen. They talked to me first; I explained what had happened, and that not only was I not okay with being threatened in my own driveway, I was just about fed up with this guy ruining my neighborhood. "He's been like this since his mother died, and his wife leaving didn't help," the older of the cops said. "Let us try to talk to him. If we can resolve this without charges, are you okay with that?"
"I just want it to stop," I said.
So they put him in the back of the police car. I could see him in the back of the car, rocking back and forth, sobbing into his hands. They really talked to him. One of them said, "What do you think your mother would say if she could see you like this? Do you think she'd be proud?" and he sobbed, "No, sir." "So what are we going to do about it? Can you work with me?" This went on for over an hour.
At the end, he apologized, shook my hand; then we hugged each other.
And he never bothered me again. It was a pocket of peace (apart from the barking of his new damn dogs) until I noticed I hadn't seen him for a while. Then I noticed an orange, official-looking sign on the front of the door which said (his name) wasn't allowed to be on the property and to call the mortgage agency if he was sighted.
Last chapter was the same two cops visiting me to ask if I knew where he was. I didn't.
"Yeah, we think he's upped and fled to Mexico," they said. "Tried to kill his wife, stole a bunch of money from his business partners. I hear that beautiful house is going to end up with HUD."
So I guess you could say I got what I needed out of the situation, by making peaceful overtures... but my peaceful overtures weren't enough to resolve the larger problem, which was a man out of control, wrecking everything around him.
(By the way, my HUD neighbors, an immigrant family, turned out to be lovely people.)