Lake Neighbors

When we started looking for a weekend cottage, one of our friends told us that we'd see a big difference between the people who lived in the west (Hill Country) part of the state and those who lived in the eastern part of the state.

We had been to the Hill Country before, and I fell in love with the small-town, down-home, Mayberry charm of all of those towns. Unfortunately, those Hill Country towns are more than a four-hour drive from where we live... way too far to drive for a weekend cottage, especially with a dog and three cats in the car. Which is why we started looking in East Texas.

It was a "learning experience," to use one of my husband's favorite expressions. The people up here around the lake are very friendly, very helpful, very resourceful, and they all subscribe to the live-and-let-live rule. The subdivision where we have our weekend cottage has a community association which has a printed booklet of deed restrictions. However, a lot of those restrictions aren't enforced. And most of those deed restrictions aren't even taken into account by the people who live in the subdivision.

I think they also live by the rule that says this-is-my-property-and-don't-you-be-telling-me-how-to-keep-it. As a result, some of the houses in our subdivision may have weird little out-buildings built to store a tractor, or an old boat-in-progress on their front lawn, or heaven only knows what-all may be growing in their vegetable gardens. And then, on the same street, you'll see a perfect, lovingly-tended English garden in front of a neat white house surrounded by a picket fence, or an expertly landscaped, golf-worthy, weed-free acre surrounding a vintage-looking clapboard cottage.

Somehow, everyone lives side-by-side up here, not caring much about what their neighbors are doing, as long as they're doing it on their own property.

Until now, that is....... because part of our lake community wants to get rid of all of the current members of The Board. Not one or two of them, but each and every one of them. The first "Ousting the Board" meeting had about fifteen residents. The second meeting had about thirty-five people. The third meeting is scheduled for next month, and I'm guessing that we'll have about fifty people at that one.

My husband has set up a Yahoo! news group for the subdivision. He mentioned that idea at the first meeting, but no one knew how to do it. Before the second meeting, he had everything set up, and handed out printed sheets to everyone there, giving instructions on how to sign up for the group. Everyone seemed excited about being able to send eMails back and forth to everyone else in the subdivision. And those without computers-- we told them about the public computers available at the library in town. (One of the residents said he'd "never set foot in a library in his life." One of the other residents told him that "right about now would be a good time to start.")

Since we bought our little cottage on this lake, we found out that all of the lakefront property around another lake, which is closer to downtown Houston, has been sold out, built up, and anyone looking for lake property will have to drive to the next lake town, which is where we are. We chose this particular area because the lake towns closer to downtown Houston were just too crowded, too built-up, too city-looking and filled with bars and restaurants catering to the twenty-something boating crowd. That wasn't what we were looking for.... we didn't want a resort destination, we wanted a restful community.

Which is what we have here, although I can see now that in twenty-years time, this town will get to looking like our town "at home," with lots of shopping centers and restaurants and theatres. Heaven knows there's enough land up here for all of that development. And when that happens, our little cottage on the lake will be worth twice what it's worth now. As it is, our lake cottage in this tiny east-Texas country town is already worth more than our house "in town," as we call it....... and the cottage is worth more just because it's on the lake.

So....... everyone can either follow the deed restrictions or not follow them, but whether they do or not, and whatever happens with the old Board (or the new Board, when it comes into being), one thing won't change..... we're all sitting on good property up here, and even the ones who aren't taking pristine care of it at the moment will still be able to make money on it when they're ready to sell.