It is very hard to explain what living with

It is very hard to explain

what living with a neighbor’s propane cannon is like to someone who doesn’t know what one is, much less describe it to someone who hasn’t had the actual experience of being harassed and victimized by one.

And then further demoralized by discovering that the law and ordinances of Rappahannock County have no provisions to protect every day home and landowners like me from this perfectly legal but outrageous nuisance. I however am going to try.

Let’s say your home phone rings one time at 6:30 p.m. and once again at 6:35 p.m. And then again at 6:40 p.m. and again at 6:45 p.m., and again at 6:50 p.m. and again at 6:55 p.m., and so on and so on, until 8 a.m. every morning. And let’s say this ringing went on every night from 6:30 p.m. to 8 a.m. for about six to seven months out of the year, typically May through November.

Now suppose you have a phone in each room of your house, and each phone rings at the exactly the same time, five minutes apart, all night long. I think most people would agree this would get rather annoying and it might be difficult to sleep even with strong prescription sleeping medication.

Did I mention that you are not allowed to unplug any of the phones or take them off the hook or turn the volume down?

Suppose now that instead of telephone rings you instead hear an explosive blast of a 12-gauge shotgun, and depending on where you are at on your property, it sounds like the shot is going off right next to your head.

Never mind trying to close your windows - the noise is too loud and the blast rattles the windows anyway. And now imagine instead of the phone ringing every five minutes it instead rings every one minute and instead of ringing from 6:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., it rings 24 hours a day for several days in a row, as happened to me over last Labor Day Weekend