The video showed me leaving for work at 6:13 and starting the truck at 6:15. The Mustang hadn't moved. I paid the fine. I made a small note in my phone. 3 weeks after that, a third violation came in.
Driveway oil staining visible from street. I walked out to my driveway. There was a small puddle of automotive oil at the foot of my driveway. The puddle was not there the previous evening when I'd come home. The puddle was located exactly where the Mustang sat when it was outside, except the Mustang had been in the garage for 9 days straight.
I went to the side of the house, found a discarded plastic gallon jug behind my AC unit, and lifted it. It still smelled of the kind of cheap motor oil that comes in red plastic. Someone had poured oil onto my driveway in the middle of the night. I paid the fine. I bagged the plastic jug.
I labeled it with a date and a time. I put it in a clean cooler in the back of my garage. If Hadley Lockwood wanted to play a slow game, I would play a slower one. The next month, Hadley parked her Mercedes across the foot of my driveway. Not in it, not blocking it.
Across the foot, wheels barely touching the curb. The long pearl white side of the GLE running exactly along the property line where my driveway met the culde-sac. She did it the first Tuesday morning at 7:00. She did it again Thursday. She did it again the Tuesday after.
When I asked her about it, polite on the sidewalk in jeans and my UG cap, she smiled and said, "Sterling, I'm just visiting our neighbor across the street. You're not blocked in. " I checked. She had. The Mercedes was parked exactly the way a closer parks, legally, visibly, just close enough to remind me she was there. The fifth violation arrived 2 days later.
Notice of HOA garage inspection pursuant to community section 8.4 B. Inspection scheduled Friday at 11:00 a.m. Inspector Brierwood Glenn Community Standards Committee. There is no provision in Georgia law that allows an HOA to enter a private garage without consent or a court order. There is, in fact, a long line of Georgia case law that says the opposite.
I'd cited it in a deposition in 2014. I knew it cold. Friday at 11:00, three men walked up my driveway in matching Navy polos. The first one was Hadley's husband's brother-in-law. I'd looked him up the day before.
The second one was a day laborer who'd been picked up at the Home Depot on Highway 20. The third one was carrying a clipboard and a digital camera. None of them had a Georgia inspector's license. None of them had a uniform. None of them had identification beyond a name tag printed at home.
I stood at the closed garage door with my coffee. Gentlemen, good morning. We're with the Brierwood Glenn Community Standards Committee, sir. Here to do your scheduled inspection. Are any of you licensed inspectors in the state of Georgia?
The clipboard guy blinked. I'm with the committee, sir. Do any of you have a court order? The three of them looked at each other. Sir, the HOA bylaws authorize The HOA bylaws cannot authorize what state law forbids.
I'm declining the inspection. Have a fine day. I closed the garage door. I went inside. I made a note in my phone.
I called my deputy chief and asked him to quietly run a name check on the three men. Two had Georgia warrants for unrelated misdemeanors. One had an active arrest order out of Decal County. I didn't tell Hadley. Two days later, a friend at the Cedar Veil Country Club called me.
He told me Hadley had been telling people at her wine night that Sterling Howerin was a sad case and that the poor widowerower has clearly been hitting the bottle since his wife died. She'd said it twice. She'd said it loud enough that two members at the next table had stood up and left. I thanked my friend. I drank a glass of unsweetened iced tea.
That same week, my son Tate came home from his summer job at the Publix on Atlanta Highway and walked into the kitchen wearing his uniform polo and a look I hadn't seen on his face since he was 13. Dad, I just punched a kid at the pool. I set my book down. He hadn't actually punched anyone. He'd been at the community pool and a board member, a man named Whit Lockwood's golf buddy, whose name I didn't know yet, had walked up to him at the snack bar and said in front of three other teenagers that Tate's father was the talk of the neighborhood for the wrong reasons, and that maybe Tate could be the one to help his old man let go of the past.
Tate had set down his Gatorade. He had looked the man in the eye. He had said, "Sir, my father is doing fine. My mother is doing better than fine, and you should ask yourself if you're proud of what just came out of your mouth. Then he had walked away.
I told him he had handled it better than I would have at his age. I didn't tell him what I was about to do. The next move was the abandoned vehicle claim. It arrived on October 4th in a registered envelope. Brierwood Glenn Estates Homeowners Association versus Sterling Howerin.
Notice of abandoned and nonoperational vehicle on residential property. The HOA was citing Georgia code section 40112, abandoned motor vehicles, and threatening to refer my Mustang to the city for empoundment in 30 days, unless I provided proof of current operational status and active road insurance. The Mustang has been on a Hagerty Classic car policy since 2018. It has a valid tag. It runs.
The reason the HOA could call it nonoperational was because I had been keeping the battery disconnected in the garage to preserve the cells while we finished the chrome work on the bumper and they had decided that meant the car was dead. I made one phone call to my friend Owen Pelier at Hagerty in Traverse City. He emailed me a stamped certificate of current coverage in 11 minutes. I forwarded it to the HOA portal with a one-s sentence cover note. Per attached, vehicle is currently registered, insured, and operational.
Please withdraw the notice. The HOA did not withdraw the notice. Instead, Hadley personally drove past my house at 4:30 the following afternoon when she knew I'd moved the Mustang to the driveway for its monthly run. I'd connected the battery. I'd warmed the engine.
I'd taken it down the culde-sac twice. She photographed it from the road as I was wiping a streak of pollen off the hood with a microfiber. The next day, the HOA portal had a new violation. Vehicle visibly disrepair. Pollen, surface grime, oil sheen on hood.
Confirmed photograph attached. The photograph was a high-angle telephoto from 60 ft away. The oil sheen was sunlight on the wax I'd just buffed. A cease and desist letter came two days later from a coming attorney whose name I'd seen on a bus bench on the way to work. The letter accused me of continuing community blight and demanded the Mustang be removed from my property within 14 days.
The letter had a typo in the second paragraph and listed a Georgia state bar number that when I checked it belonged to an attorney who had retired in 2016. I made another note in my phone. That weekend, my son Tate came home from school where he'd been buying a graduation tassel and told me he had run into Bryson Lockwood in the parking lot. Bryson had walked up to him by the back of the F-150 and said, "Bro, just tell your dad to sell the car. My dad's going to make this hurt if he doesn't.