I raised the issue the next morning when Diane stopped beside the row of mailboxes in a white SUV that looked as if it had never encountered mud. She wore sunglasses even though the sky was gray. I told her politely that the tower was privately owned, that the association was a customer, and that describing the equipment as HOA property could confuse residents in an emergency. She smiled as though I were a child asking why the sky was blue.
"Kenneth, it's just language," she said. "People like feeling ownership of the amenities they pay to use." I told her language had a way of becoming paperwork. Her smile tightened, and she drove away before I finished speaking.
Six months later, contractors installed a decorative perimeter fence meant, according to another newsletter, to unify the landscaping around the clubhouse and utility area. I came out one morning and found the steel legs of my grandfather's tower sitting behind new black pickets. The fence had looped onto Parcel A by eleven feet at the nearest corner. The crew chief said the board had approved the installation and showed me a drawing that treated my equipment pad as if it were part of the common grounds.
I showed him the original survey stake with its faded orange cap. He looked at it, then at his clipboard, and said he had only been told where to put the fence. I believed him. Most of the men standing out there with post-hole diggers had no opinion about property rights; they had families and a list of jobs to finish. I called Diane, emailed the property management company, and sent a survey copy by certified mail. Nobody moved the fence.
At first I assumed the neglect was laziness. Then someone installed a keypad gate on the new fence, and I found myself needing to ask a neighborhood employee for an access code to reach equipment my family had maintained since the Eisenhower administration. I cut a temporary access arrangement with the property manager while reserving my rights in writing. Every Tuesday, I walked through that gate and felt a little more as though I were entering someone else's property. The visual change was working exactly the way Diane intended.
The payment delays began not long after. An invoice came due, and the management company said the HOA had not approved it. I called the association treasurer, who referred me back to management. The next month the answer was the same, and then the next. I kept supplying treated water because a person cannot simply use one hundred and eighty-six families as collateral in a billing dispute, even when the association representing them behaves as if a contract is a suggestion.
Twenty-six months passed without a single payment. The account reached fifty-five thousand nine hundred dollars for water actually delivered through a meter the county had checked and calibrated. Anna kept asking whether we should file suit. I kept telling her we would, once I was sure the residents understood the problem and once we could afford the legal fees. The truth was more embarrassing. I still believed that a signed contract and a reasonable explanation would eventually be enough.