Neighbor relations...

My neighbor seems like a nice guy, but like many people likes to have things “His way”. The other day he had visiting guests at his home. The weather was warm and they had dinner on their outdoor deck that is less than 30 feet from our bedroom. 

All the diners were loud and when we went to bed at 9pm we could hear them pretty clearly. We were hoping that at 10pm everyone would all retire inside the house, but they kept their loud encounter going until about 11:30pm. I was so mad that I couldn’t sleep. 

The following night the same thing happened and fearing a repeat of the previous evening, right after 10:30pm, I texted my dear neighbor asking him to “please tell your guests to tone it down, thanks” A few minutes later they all quieted down but my neighbor never answered my text, as he probably felt too embarrassed to respond. 

I felt good about the way I handled the incident. Would you have responded differently and if so, how?

John Winter, 1938-2025

My neighbor John Kools Winter, Jr. passed away peacefully in the early morning hours of June 13, 2025, at his home in Park City, Utah. He was 86. He was born in Holland, Michigan and graduated from the University of Illinois School of Architecture. Although trained as an architect, his career ultimately led him to the financial world, where he worked as a floor broker, commodities and trader. 

John loved both the mountains and golf, but skiing was his true passion. Vail was is early stomping ground, but when he moved to Park City, 17 years ago, nearby Alta ski resort held a special place in his heart as he used to commute from Park City each day (a one-hour commute), and he often shared vivid stories from his early ski days in Vail, Colorado, during the 1970s. Remarkably, he continued skiing until the age of 83. 

I first met him in 2011 and he told me about his passion for skiing and it wasn’t until February 2017—when he was 78—that I truly understood his remarkable spirit on the slopes. That day at Park City Mountain, we carved our way down Portuguese Gap at Jupiter Peak, one of the resort’s most challenging runs. John skied it with the grace and grit of a man half his age, and together we had fun skiing 10,844 vertical feet that day! 

John left us with his wife Cathy and daughter Alice by his side and after his passing the Alta flag flew over his house. Over the years, Evelyne and I cherished our frequent talks with John, often stopping by his home to hear his endless trove of hilarious ski tales—each one delivered with his signature wit and twinkle in his eye. 

While we’ll miss him deeply, his stories, his laughter, and his love for the mountains will stay with us forever. 

Hi neighbor, can I sell you something?

The other afternoon as we happened to be coming home and while standing in our driveway, a neighbor stopped by, asked me how many days I had skied this season and told us he a great day of powder skiing in Deer Valley this past Sunday. 

Then he asked, “What are your vacations plans for the summer”. I answered that we had not done any planning yet and that we preferred the off-season to the busy summer months. 

He then asked again: “Have you ever been to Redfish Lake, in Idaho, it’s one hour away from Sun Valley, in the Sawtooth National Recreation Area, and it’s just wonderful?” I said we had driven several time through that area, but we didn’t know that particular spot.

Then he came back and try to close the deal (he is a real-estate agent) saying: “We had two weeks reserved for July and cannot go, so you might take that reservation and enjoy it, it’s just $1,300 for the four nights!” 

Without missing a beat, I answered: “Sorry, but as I told you we don’t travel during the busy summer tourist season, thanks anyway!” Some people cannot listen.

What’s all that hung laundry?

While strolling in our neighborhood on Thursday night, our attention went to some impressive amount of laundry hung out, which is a totally unusual sight in Park City, even though there are no specific rule against that practice, but I had never seen, at least in a front yard, for all to see.

From one house to the next and above the fences, clothes to bedding and all kinds of objects flexible or pliable enough to be hung, everything imaginable was hung for everyone to see. 

When we saw someone walking by that display, we asked what was going on and a man explain that his daughter, who lives nearby, happened to be at her place when the residence next door caught fire, burned down and “flavored” all of her family clothes and furnishing with this typical acrid smell that has the power to impregnate anything porous like textile materials. 

Only now, did we understand! Another way of confirming that when something looks weird or unusual, there’s always a good reason behind it!

The dangers of snow removal

It’s not uncommon that snow removal issues provoke conflicts between people. That happened to me several years ago with my next-door neighbor, and has been a recurring issue ever since. 

A few days ago, he ended up blowing his snow into my driveway. I called him up on it, and he came to fix the problem, shoveling what what his snow off my property.

It wasn’t as bad as what happened this Monday near Scranton, Pennsylvania, when a couple was shoveling their snow into their neighbor property.

The latter got mad, killed the couple and killed himself shortly after that. A pretty onerous conflict resolution for a few cubic feet of snow. 

I hope my own neighbor behaves more nicely, or better yet, stop pushing his snow into my home!

The neighbor’s smelly he-goat

I have been raised with a lot of goats in my environment and know a thing or two about that particular breed of animal. 

What I know for sure is that the male, commonly called he-goat or buck, can smell intensely bad and a lot, like let’s say a skunk, so you get the type of fragrance! 

A lady who lives about half-a-mile from us, as the crow flies, has decided to have such a male goat as a pet, and during rut season, that is, the days are getting shorter in July and through early winter, we get a whiff of his scent when we get close to his enclosure. 

His scent glands are located behind the horns and the system is powerful enough for any female goat, luck enough to stroll by, to notice. 

To make the stench worst, and disgustingly so, the buck pees all over his front legs and beard during the rut. When the female pees, the buck sticks his nose in the urine as it comes out. He also rubs his head in the spot on the dirt where he pees. With his head covered with mud and urine, the buck takes great pride in his elaborate odor. 

I wouldn’t want to be a neighbor to that household; if I did, I’d lodge a complaint, but unfortunately even though our city has an ordinance against animals that “cause unreasonable fouling of the air by odors”, I wouldn’t be too sure about the outcome. 

That lady simply is a big jerk, totally oblivious of the plight of her close neighbors. You may say a he-goat is better than a pet tiger or a python, but think of the poor animal that has no space to roam and no social life. 

That’s a situation simply too cruel and selfish on the part of the owner who should deserve the same kind of isolation!

Park City’s good Samaritans

We were about to have another wonderful bike ride this morning, until half-way in our itinerary I experienced a flat. I don’t know about you, but I despise having flats when I ride.

So, here I am, taking the rear wheel apart, struggling to separate the tire from the tube, other cyclists very nicely stopping to ask if I needed help, a proud, self-reliant “no thanks!” as an answer, then more struggle in trying to fit the tube inside the tire and the whole assembly inside the rim. I then proceeded to inflate the repaired tire with my measly, portable pump.

A passing motorist must have seen me battling my bike, returned to where I was, riding his electric bike with a heavy-duty foot pump in hand, just saying “That’ll be a lot easier with this one!”

A lot easier it was, and in much less time it would have otherwise taken me, I had put 90 psi inside the tire. All this to say that I found it very much heartwarming to see so many folks stop, asking if I needed help, and that one man, who didn’t ask for anything, return expressly to help me with a wonderful solution.

This makes me think that my Parkite neighbors are terrific, we are lucky to live there, and that I must double-down in returning such a good deed!

Neighborhood concert

June is normally when public outdoor concerts begin in earnest around Park City, but not this year.

Concerts have fallen victim to the virus and won’t be part of our summer experience. In the middle of that, a former neighbor of ours who lives across the street from our previous home, decided to organize a mini live concert on a large lawn for the block to enjoy.

We stopped back on Friday while it was underway between 5 and 9 pm. The crowd was small, but attentive, half of them wore masks, the music was okay but good enough.

We listened to a few songs and moved on as we realized summer was here to stay in spite of our sudden, bizarre and baffling state of pandemic...

None of her damn business!

We recently changed pavers on our driveway.

The job took two and a half day and since our house borders a very quiet street, very few passers-by saw the work being done, except for one lady we had never seen or met before, who last night, while we were finishing our evening stroll, stopped her car near us, rolled her window down and asked me:

“Why did you change your pavers?”

I responded: “I went to Lourdes, prayed to the Virgin Mary, and -kaboom! - my pavers got changed!”

She seemed confused as she probably didn’t know where and what Lourdes was. She persisted: “Did you paid for the work?”

I said “No, it was pure miracle!”

She stubbornly pursued: “Were your pavers damaged?”

I finally concluded: “Not that I know of, as for the new ones, for the past three days, they’ve been holding up remarkably well...”

She drove off, her sick curiosity probably less than satisfied...

Missed appointment

We just got new neighbors who purchased a large, $3 million house located just across our home. The house is quite large and dominate our more modest home like a medieval castle towers over its subjects’ abodes.

The owners come from California, the man of the house has apparently a big job and all the attributes that show his status in society. Since they came on the scene a few months ago, we had few interactions with them, all of them happened when they appeared on their dominating perch and addressed us like the Royal Family addresses its subjects from one of the balconies at Buckingham Palace, implicitly creating a “ruler-to-subject” relationship.

A few nights ago, one of their thirty-something son and his wife were staying alone with an other couple and hollered up to have us climb to their place and share a glass of wine with them. We then had a very pleasant exchange.

On Sunday night, while she was hosing down her trees, the lady of the house addressed both my wife and I from high up in her “castle-like” residence, and invited us for drinks on Monday night at 6 pm. This wasn’t particularly what we had planned for that evening, but out of civility and good neighborly manners, we acquiesced.

So around 4 pm, that night, we began preparing a beautiful platter with delightful snacks and proceeded to climb the many stairs that lead to the imposing residence. On the way out of our house, we were stopped by yet another son of the family that uttered a few words in French and wished us a pleasant evening. His last words were disquieting and implied that he wasn’t going to see us within the next minutes. My wife and I looked at each other with a mixture of confusion and doubt.

Was this the right night, the good time or did we both get confused? In spite of this ominous signal, we soldiered on, climbed to the very top, rang the doorbell, waited some long seconds and when he saw us at his door holding our tray of goodies, the gentleman of the house, obviously not expecting us at all, said: “Sorry, but we have a reservation at the restaurant and we must go now!” I managed to squeeze in: “Well, last evening, your wife invited to come and have a drink with you tonight...”

He sort of said: “Sorry!”, closed the door, and our sole option was to turn around, humiliated and looking like the horse’s ass. We returned home, had a soothing drink in our garden and wondering if we had heard the invitation correctly, but we concurred that we had heard exactly the same thing, the night before.

We had dinner and then went for a 2 miles walk. When we returned home, a good 90 minutes after the incident took place, the man of the house was watering his trees with a hose and said: “Come back on Thursday for a drink!” We both said “No” and I added: “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me! No, we won’t come.” He said “We just made a mistake!” I responded, “When I make mistake, I apologize”.

We walked back to our front door and that’s when I discovered, stuck on our front door, a post-it note in which his wife had apologized, but by then it was too late, the damage was done and that’s the end of my story.

“Prime” mystery solved!

Earlier this month, I explained that Prime, the new Amazon delivery service, missed a delivery at my house.

A few days ago, as I was walking in my neighborhood, I notice a house number very close to mine except for one digit, to the point that it was almost too easy to confuse.

Then, my eyes moved on to the entry door and it reminded me the photo that Amazon had sent me to prove the delivery of its parcel. While the shipment wasn’t delivered to my door, that one looked just like the one appearing on Amazon’s photo.

When I got home, I checked to make sure and, bingo! That was unmistakably the door in question.

Next, I could only assume that this neighbor picked the package, opened it up, glance at it and, as he couldn’t use it, plus realized it was addressed to me, didn’t want to face the embarrassment and explaining he would have to face had he return the goods to its legitimate owner, that instead, he tossed it in the garbage.

What a neighborly thing to do!

A very thoughtful present

A week or so ago, my wife found a rather puzzling grocery tote bag someone had dropped by our front-door after ringing the doorbell.

I discovered it when I returned from skiing, looked at it and in the absence of an address, phone number or web address, I noticed a name “Foodland” that sounded a bit like “Foodtown” a name known in the area, and assumed someone had dropped it to advertise for a small grocery store using the same moniker and located 15 miles from Park City.

Strange promotion indeed when we already have 6 large grocery store in an 8 mile radius around our home. Apparently unrelated to this mysterious bag, we also helped some neighbors while they were in Hawaii during the Christmas and New Year holidays. Specifically, we agreed to feed their cat and pick up their mail.

I also cleared their entire driveway following 16 inches of accumulated snowfall. I love to do that kind of job, was glad to do a good deed and thought that the lady of the house would appreciate it when she'd returned home on January 1st.

She and her husband eventually got back, but we never heard a word from either of them. No phone call, no text message (as they usually do), nothing at all. Since, I did the work, I even wondered if I had done something wrong and their silence was a way of expressing their dissatisfaction.

At any rate, this past Wednesday, we came across the husband who stopped his car to ask us if we had gotten “the bag”; no word of thanks for the service I had performed but he said something about “musubi” which sounded like some good food (spam musubi is in fact a popular snack and lunch food in Hawaii composed of a slice of grilled Spam on top of a block of rice, wrapped together with nori seaweed).

At first we were a bit puzzled, and finally it downed on us that he was the mysterious individual who had dropped the infamous tote bag.

I blurted out: “I guess we did, but there was nothing in it!” inferring that I didn't find any “musubi” inside, and that the cheap plasticized grocery bag, which typically costs less than one dollar, wasn't much of a present for recognizing the good job I had done.

He answered “No, there was just a piece of cardboard in it to form a stable bottom!” I just nodded and we resumed walking...

Over 30 year of change in Park City...

Sometime we wonder what has changed so much in Park City in the more than 32 years we've been there. It's not so much the housing sprawl, the worsening traffic conditions or just the crowds. It's more the way people act.

Long gone are simple and unpretentious relationship within the community!

When we came to town, we were pretty much all the same; mountain lovers, driving beat-up Subarus or Jeeps and not paying much attention to the externalities of daily life, be it in the houses we lived in, the cars we drove or the trips we took.

All this has since changed for the worst. Snobbery, vanities, massive money and big egos have spoiled the landscape irremediably, we think. We'll continue to behave the same and unwittingly, we'll stand out...

Dinner with a Trump supporter

Last night we invited one of our neighbors for dinner and while we avoided bringing up politics to the table, the husband, a die-hard republican, couldn't avoid praising Trump (even though he claimed he didn't vote for the man – Wow!).

His wife who said she voted for the Libertarian candidate wasn't as adamant about Donald Trump.

I pushed back as strongly as I could, trying to remain a civil host, on the account that the man was 1) a jerk, 2) a hypocrite and 3) a potential tyrant. In the end we agreed to disagree in the most civil way but by nonetheless standing on our respective positions.

Today, after watching a rather defensive and overly controlled press conference by the soon-to-be “Reigning Duck”, I felt that I was perfectly right to stand my ground and that my first fears about the out-control-leader were well grounded...

Snow removal express

Some people are lazy, some are careless and some are selfish. I have a neighbor that is “all of the above”. I'm a mountain guy and I use mountain common sense, okay.

My neighbor is clueless. He clears his driveway by simply pushing the snow into the street, leaving a big heap of snow right in the middle of the road and goes back satisfied inside his home.

He doesn't care that the city has already cleared the road, that cars will have to plow through the mound of snow and pedestrians might sleep and fall on snow that will stay there for a while and sue him for that.

I guess, when you're dumb, you're dumb; sad but true.

We won't be nuisance!

That what we thought would happened when our two neighbor ladies got married last Sunday. They had dropped a note in every neighbors' mailbox letting us know of the impending celebration.

We had company that night for dinner on our outside deck and we enjoyed the live music for the entire time we were together. It was pretty loud, but people generally only get married once, right? especially when they're in their seventies!

At 10 pm our company was gone and we went to bed while the music kept going loudly in spite of the local noise ordinance that stipulate that after that time, things should go quieter.

Well the ruckus lasted till about midnight as we were enduring some terrible renditions of the “Piano Man” and “My Girl” when silence suddenly fell over the party. Someone had probably called the cops!

Time to visit the Senior Center?

Yesterday, after she returned from a mountain-bike ride, my spouse went to visit an 80 some years old lady that lives near us, and this charming woman asked my wife if we liked the Park City Senior Center, because, from her own experience, the Salt Lake Senior Center was far superior...

Of course, we've never set foot into that Center yet. We don't play cards and still intend to ski and ride, plus do a host of other active endeavors before we sign on to that honorable place.

What was she thinking?

Handicapped?

We have neighbors that look, walk, ski, bike and do things like most healthy people and yet show a “handicapped parking sign” on the windshields of their two vehicles.

It's fair to wonder what ails them, but suffice to say that in Utah, such tags are given to people who can't walk 200 feet without stopping to rest, use braces, canes, crutches, use portable oxygen or have some other clear physical limitation that I can't seen in either one of these people.

This said, last evening, as we were passing their house, the husband was busy chasing squirrels with a BB gun. He proudly said that he had already killed 50 of them this year. Hearing that, I finally understood what his handicap might be!

The empty lot

More than one-and-a-half year ago, we set our sights on an empty lot that, we felt, might work to receive our new home. At that point, this was just a vague idea. That lot had sat empty ever since the subdivision was drawn up, in the late seventies.

There are two neighbors on each sides of the lot that purchased their home between six and eleven years ago, and until we started to build on this vacant, 12,000 square foot lot, it was some wonderful open space where their respective dogs could play and where they could throw their unwanted grass clippings, discarded Christmas trees and the like.

Obviously, since we've begun to disturb that freewheeling way of life and moved into our house, the good old days are hard to forget and resentment towards the new comers can still be felt at times. As my wife once suggested to one of the neighbors: “Why didn't you buy that empty lot?” Obviously, they didn't and today they must live with us, their new permanent fixture...

The extraordinary block party

Our neighbors' house dominate the block like no other ones. It has expansive views, is the largest one and arguably the most decorated and ornate residence, not to mention the awesome rock-scape surrounding it like a moat!

So, this Tuesday, about 150 guests, friends and neighbors were invited to celebrate the completion of their regal landscaping and, just as simply, the apex of summer.

Big party, with Motherlode, the local band, playing Park City-approved tunes, and a large, fun and very diverse company. The stormy weather, quite capricious, threw a few fireworks here and there, graced us with a double-rainbow, but still let us have plenty of good fun...