In The New West magazine

Bill Vaughn: The Art of the Feud

By Bill Vaughn, 2-11-08

If Thomas Jefferson had time-traveled to our rural neighborhood he never would have predicted that small landowners will forge the spine of democracy. Because here in the Squalor Zone—that redneck netherworld of “manufactured homes” and distressed pickups that encircles Western towns like the puffy flesh around an infection—it’s one against all and all against one.

Soon after we moved into our ten-acre plot of Montana floodplain the opening salvos were fired in what would become a civil war raging across two decades and multiple fronts.

First, we discovered that the Smiths (not their real name) had installed a gate in the barbed wire separating our place from theirs so they could traipse around our forest on their nags. Then we found the bloated carcass of a doe gut-shot with an arrow in a copse of hawthorns not far from a steel archery stand these yahoos had installed in one of our Ponderosas. I nailed the gate shut, pulled down the tree stand, and tacked No Trespassing signs on the border. One winter morning Mr. Smith blew these signs to smithereens with a shotgun fired from his snowmobile. So when the Smiths decided to sell half their place, presumably to pay down their liquor bills, I sent an aerial photo to the real estate agent that showed the five acres in question under water during the most recent flood.

Meanwhile, my wife, Kitty, had entered a barrel race that paid prize money to the fastest times in three divisions. After her horse stumbled at the third barrel, and her time dropped her into first place in the second level, another neighbor, Mrs. Johnson, complained to the event’s organizer that Kitty had won $300 only because she pulled up her horse so she could win the lower division.

We pondered the dialectic of retribution analyzed so poignantly by Sonny in The Godfather: “They hit us so we hit ‘em back.” Soon we found a convenient revenge. When the Johnsons ignored the zoning laws and began building an illegal second shack on their property, we complained. Construction was halted. They appealed, won a variance, and were soon building yet another pesthole. This time we convinced the county attorney to file suit, and the Johnsons squandered beaucoup legal fees losing in court. Good times.

Their response to our meddling was a trap-and-skeet club in their back pasture. The fusillade of shotgun blasts terrorized our horses and dogs and rattled the dishes. When we called the sheriff he said nothing could be done. After I strode forth and screamed at the Johnsons in language that would shock a longshoreman, they obtained a temporary restraining order, alleging that among numerous acts of trespass I had tampered with the wiring of their new house while they were away. To counter these lies I mailed the justice of the peace who signed the order the district judge’s ruling against the Johnsons, in order to establish their motive.

At the hearing the justice ordered the combatants to cross-examine one another. Kitty looked at me and smiled. I was thrilled. Mrs. Johnson went first, and asked me whether I had called her certain names. I said yes. Then, despite the many other points in her complaint, she rested her case.

My turn. After I had addressed each allegation she admitted that my outburst was the only one based in fact. She looked stunned, like one of those deviants filmed on NBC’s To Catch A Predator.

The justice scolded me. But when he turned his scorn on the Johnsons regarding the district court case it seemed that he was this close to charging them with perjury.  Instead, he threw out their complaint and advised us to quit fighting. As if.

Then we got a letter from the state. A downstream neighbor, Mr. Jones, said we were stealing irrigation water from a stream whose water rights are owned by a dozen of us freeholders. In fact, when we bought the place we were aware that one of the culverts draining a stock pond along this waterway had collapsed. But because the earthwork damming the pond was porous, the water percolated downstream anyway. The state elected not to order the culvert replaced. Our response was to inform the state that Jones had pulled down fences so his cattle could graze on the state land bordering his fiefdom. The herd was soon back in Jones’ overgrazed pastures.

The “Code of the West” is a guide issued by some Western counties telling urban newcomers what to expect. Don’t ask much in the way of government services, it says. Animals are dangerous, manure stinks, you may not own the mineral rights under your hobby ranch, and so on. What it doesn’t warn about are people like me.

A couple years ago the biggest landowner in our backwater announced that he was going to dig a gravel pit on his ranch, and build an asphalt plant and a cement factory. Kitty and I looked at each other: Over our dead bodies. Our neighbors were saying the same thing. At a meeting we glared at one another. But then, suddenly, the animus fled the room like cigar smoke through an open window, and we started talking about how to fight this massive industrial scheme together.

Driving home I whistled a happy tune. Not because I saw an end to the feuds. But because the most hated man in the Squalor Zone was no longer me. 

Bill Vaughn is the author of First, a little Chee-Chee

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