Neighbors Can Make you Want to Tear your Hair out

I am in favor of private religious displays. If you want to decorate your house, go right ahead, provided that it does not cause major issues. Major issues being unwieldy traffic, things that cause property values to sink, or impinge upon quality of life.

The Chicken Roaster episode of Seinfeld comes to mind. You know, the one where the Kenny Rogers place makes Kramer nuts.

Out in Boston there is a good neighbor whose religious fervor has caused him to create a minor disturbance. Check this out.





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A Middlesex Superior Court judge said Dube can keep an illuminated, three-story religious display in his Pepperell backyard, more than five years after local officials ordered that he take it down because he did not have the proper building permits.

Dube, an 85-year-old World War II veteran who lost a leg sweeping mines in Germany, said he began building the shrine after the Virgin Mary spoke to him during his morning prayers on May 28, 1982.

After a neighbor complained about the shrine's size and the visitors it attracted, the town asked Dube to remove it in 1999.

Instead, he expanded it, adding a 30-foot painting of Jesus and a 24-foot illuminated cross to a 20-foot mural of Our Lady of Fatima."

Wow.