I MOVED BACK to Reno, Nevada (THE BIGGEST LITTLE CITY IN THE WORLD. We’re required to say that.)
I had been out of the United States for a while and I didn’t have a USA car driver’s license. My foreign driver’s license was a motorcycle license. To get around, I bought a used moped.
I needed a place to live. I tried to hire a real estate agent. The local real estates agents were long on Covid 19 and very short on service. I finally found a guy who wanted to sell me a house.
I then began to find out about politics.
The political situation in California is so bad that people are bailing out, selling their house and moving across the mountains to Reno. Property prices in California are so high that the people wound up with large amounts of cash after the sale of their California house. The new refugees then bid Reno house prices up to insane levels.
My real estate agent found me a few places where I could live. I would make an offer on the property, at or over the listing price, only to find myself outbid by tens of thousands of dollars. I finally found a place and managed to buy it at the listing price. There had to be a reason why I was able to buy the place at the listing price, but I was semi desperate, as I had my foreign goods on the way and I needed a place to store the items.
My new house was a smallish place, surrounded by a wire fence. Behind the house was a detached garage. I got moved in and stored my moped in the detached garage.
Unfortunately, my new house was within easy walking distance of a homeless encampment. The homeless, at least mostly, have no salable skills, except for drug sales or theft.
After a few days, I found that my moped had been stolen from my detached garage. I had insurance and I filed a claim. To get around, I then bought a used car. When I drove my used car back to my detached garage, I found that my garage door opener did not work.
I asked around, of my neighbors. I found that there were homeless people living in my detached garage. (The people living in my detached garage are obviously not homeless, as they have a place to live. However, the Reno police refer to the squatters as homeless. Don’t ask me why, I have no clue.) I called the Reno police and they evicted the squatters, but only after negotiations with the squatters, that would do credit to the United Nations.
I then found that the official City of Reno policy is that trespassers will be evicted, but not arrested. If I became involved in a physical dispute with trespassers or squatters, on my own property, that results in injury to the trespassers or squatters, I would be arrested. (Tax paying citizen, we don’t got to ’cho you no steenking legal rights.)
After the first wave of squatters are evicted, I find that they have removed some of the copper electric wiring in my detached garage. My garage door opener will not work, until I have an electrician come in and do expensive repair work.
I have to park my recently acquired car on the street and then I find myself engaged in a sort of low-level war with homeless trespassers and/or would be squatters.
The police are slow to respond to my calls for help.
I strap on my .357 magnum pistol and evict the latest wave of squatters in my detached garage. I find that the squatters are not afraid of the police. The squatters have legal support from those do gooders who don’t have detached garages. Legal support does no good against my .357 magnum force.
I then board up my detached garage, step by step. I have replaced the damaged garage door with a sturdier unit that’s bolted shut. I have boarded up a window that the homeless broke, to get in. I have re keyed the people door. I have wired shut the front and back gates to my property.
One evening, I catch a convicted felon, cutting the wire on my back gate. I call for the police and then confront the asshole who has just cut the wire on my back gate. I have my .357 magnum pistol, but the convicted felon knows that I won’t shoot, unless he actually enters my property.
A police car, on roving patrol, then enters the alleyway behind my garage.
The convicted felon then runs, pursued by the police.
I find myself standing just inside my back gate, looking at a late model Chevy pickup truck, in the alleyway. I go out and find that the Chevy pickup truck has a key in the ignition switch. I get in and fire that there sucker up. I drive down to the intersection of the alleyway with a street. After checking for traffic, I turn and drive for quite a while, down to the The Meadows (AKA LasVegas). Once in the city limits of The Meadows, I manage to locate a chop shop.
The guy who runs the chop shop then investigates the pickup truck. The license plate on the vehicle that I have acquired is indeed for a pickup truck, a Dodge pickup truck. There are two VINs in the Chevy pickup. The hidden VIN is for a Utah stolen. The visible VIN indicates some involvement of the pickup in some sort of criminal activity, although nothing worse than murder one and alien smuggling, resulting in deaths.
A round of spirited bargaining at the chop shop gets me $500, a room for the night at a small casino hotel, off Las Vegas Boulevard (I have no idea why they call The Meadows, Las Vegas, maybe Español speakers), a meal in the casino buffet and a hook up with the Gambler’s Special flight back to Reno.
In the morning, I get a lift over to The Meadows airport and I ride the Gambler’s Special flight back to Reno. I take a bus over to near where I live and then walk home.
I drive to WalMart and get a bicycle wire lock for my back gate. The bicycle wire lock is a lot sturdier than my previous wire lock. I drive back home and then install the bicycle lock on my back gate. I get the bicycle lock installed and my back gate secured.
