I hate Illinois Nazis.

I live in the suburbs, which has its benefits, but such suburbanite living comes at a cost ... The H.O.A.

Those 3 dreaded letters stand for Home Owners Association, but the organization goes by other names (e.g., The Gestapo, Yard Nazis, and The Man).

We bought our current house as a foreclosure, so it should come as no surprise the yard wasn't well maintained. Within a week of living here we got a letter in the mail, a "Dear Occupant" letter, the gist of which was, "The HOA is fining you 100 bones for weeds in your flowerbeds."

I sent them an email saying, "Y'all gonna make me lose my mind, up in here, up in here."

They were like, "Oh, that's a standard letter we send to that address. We'll hold off and let you get your scene under control."

Later we got a similar letter because Herr Göring spotted some sloogey boards in our privacy fence. Fix it ... or else.

We've probably got 6 of these notices in the 2 years we've been living up in this piece. The most recent one was really whacked.

Our neighbor put in a beautiful privacy fence (seen in the background of this picture). It makes my rickety grayed thing look bad, really bad. He did his whole fence and wanted us to kick a buck or two to help cover the cost of that which separates our yards.

Heinrich Himmler let us know that the staining of the fence was unapproved and the infraction needed to be fixed.

Well, the neighbor is presently in England and his mother-in-law inhabits the place. I'm like, "What, they want her to take down the fence? Replace it? Make it look like mine?"

I'm sure they ultimately want fences like this one for each of our houses.

C'mon. It's not like we have a recliner or a washer on the front porch or a stack of tires or an expired auto in the yard.

Stuff like this motivates me to find a piece of land where I can have a chain-link fence and shoot guns in my backyard and pretend I'm living in the land of the free and the home of the brave.