The Monsters are Gone on Maple Street

 Almost exactly two years ago I wrote about the famous "Twilight Zone" episode, "The Monsters Are On Maple Street" and I asked what if something like that happened in your neighborhood.  This is part of my blog at the time:

"There are 2,000 people every month who move into the Myrtle Beach vicinity and of course tens of thousand of people in the country monthly move into a new neighborhood.  What would happen if a new neighbor was "weird?"  What if the house is mainly just inhabited by teenagers who smoke pot and drive new trucks that are noisy at all hours of the day and night?  What if they regularly have friends over and cars are parked all over the street although there's no parking allowed on the street? Questions could arise like, are they selling drugs, do they have a gun, and what is going on inside the house? Suddenly, people don't feel safe on their own block.  What if trash was being left on the property and suddenly a quiet neighborhood had completely changed?"

This was the beginning of what we experienced in our neighborhood and it is finally over.  It turned out to be worse than we imagined with late night parties, vandalism, dogs locked up and attacking neighbors, a drunk ex-husband driving through the neighborhood and actually having a shooting range facing the whole development and causing minor injuries, yet he was arrested for assaulting a young teacher. I actually complained in person to the HOA one day saying, "we don't know what is going to happen from one day to the next." I came home to find two cops searching the Mom's car!

They finally moved out a month or so ago, but they did it in their own special way. They planned a garage sale and put up signs and then the day came and people came, but they did not show up for their own garage sale. The mother, probably in her mid 30's acted as a teenager throughout the two years, taking no responsibility for her kid's actions. During the last week or so, her next door neighbor saw her in the backyard and waved.  This was the same neighbor who had his wife and son attacked by her dogs and took one of them to the hospital to be treated and sued her for minor injuries.  Instead of waving, the mother gave him the finger and stuck her tongue out at him. The son though, who terrorized the neighborhood with his loud truck, he decided to throw eggs at the same neighbor's house and he was caught on film. It was quite an exit they made.

The son has friends in the neighborhood and does drive through our street, but it's a whole different neighborhood now. It is a relief to so many of us and they immediately made the neighborhood better by leaving.  They may not have been the monsters on Maple Street in "The Twilight Zone," but they made many people on our street miserable and they will never be forgotten.