That was when I called Tom Martinez. Tom and I had known each other since high school, although he had become the kind of lawyer who owned three matching suits and I had become the kind of man who carried spare wire nuts in his truck. His office was in the county seat, above a bakery that made him complain constantly about gaining weight. He read Vivian's letter twice and then asked me to bring him the deed and survey.
"She can send letters all day," he said. "The question is whether she can point to a recorded agreement binding your land." I asked whether the age of my property protected me automatically. "No," Tom answered.
"Age isn't magic. Recorded restrictions, easements, and actual boundaries matter. If you're outside the association, that's strong evidence, but we prove it from the documents. We don't rely on slogans." That was the first of many times Tom saved me from turning anger into a bad legal argument.
He sent a restrained response enclosing the property description, the relevant plats, and the 1987 dock permit. Vivian answered with a longer letter that used more capital letters and threatened county enforcement. A county inspector arrived the following Tuesday, looked over the dock, compared it with his records, and said he found no obvious violation covered by the complaint. He still recommended I replace a loose handrail before somebody leaned on it. I did so that same weekend, because a fair warning doesn't stop being fair just because an unfair person started the argument.
Vivian responded by finding ways to make mornings unpleasant. I usually walked to the lake around six, when the mist was low and the bass hunted close to shore. Suddenly the landscaping crew on the Willow Creek common strip began working at almost that exact hour. Leaf blowers screamed behind the fence. A brush cutter started whenever I set my tackle box down. Trucks idled close enough that exhaust crossed the water and hung in the still morning air.
It wasn't always illegal for a landscaper to use a blower, and I wasn't going to waste the sheriff's time claiming otherwise. What bothered me was the pattern. On rainy mornings, when I stayed inside, the crew did not appear. On days when I moved my fishing time later, their trucks seemed to arrive later too.
I started a notebook, noting the dates, times, equipment, weather, and any witnesses. My grandfather had taught me to listen to water. My years as an electrician had taught me to document what a system was actually doing, not what someone claimed it should do.