Recently, I was thinking about a childhood friend who lived down the road from us a mile or so. We were in second grade together. Our mothers carpooled to get us there and to dance lessons, and I think they socialized a little--just a cup of coffee after school a time or two while we played. They were from England and I remember her mother's English accent as she drove us around. I remember my friend's brother coming to our class and reciting a poem.

I don't recall whether her father ever spoke to us children while we were playing. There was a lot of talk between our mothers about him finishing his dissertation. I remember that his wife talked about typing it for him, as wives were expected to do in the 1960s. I'd always presumed that they came to Hattiesburg for him to finish his doctorate in anthropology. As it turned out, he was already teaching there and was elevated to department chair very quickly when he finished that dissertation.

The thing that got me Googling was my memories of my friend talking about the time they'd spent on the island of Yap while he was doing his research. I googled his last name, the University of Southern Mississippi, and Yap, and I found...not what I expected.

I still haven't found anything about his work on Yap, but I did find that the Southern Poverty Law Center has a whole page devoted to Roger Pearson, "a retired British anthropologist and purveyor of extreme racist and anti-Semitic ideas. Over the course of his career, Pearson has been a fierce defender of 'Aryan' racial superiority, and has maintained ties to numerous Nazi and neo-Nazi groups and individuals."

(He died last year at 97, showing that the SPLC needs to update its site and that only the good die young.)

Historian William Tucker called Pearson “perhaps the most important postwar exponent of the racial science that had characterized the Third Reich.”

The Pearsons were only in Hattiesburg a few years, but he used the time to fire nontenured faculty in anthropology, comparative religion, sociology, and philosophy and replace them with neo-Nazis and eugenicists. He soon moved to the Montana College of Mineral Science and Technology, perhaps enacting a similar coup, leaving academia a few years later to spend the next five decades as a full-time racist/fascist/antisemite/whatever.

He was so extreme that the Heritage Foundation kicked him off their board, the World Anticommunist League terminated him as chairman, and Ronald Reagan told him to stop using a letter from him in his publicity.

Now, it's a judgement call whether he's the worst person I ever met. When I was a child, I shook hands with Trent Lott during his first campaign for Congress. When I was twenty, I attended a wedding at which Senator Eastland was also a guest. Also...*gestures wildly at spending my formative years in mid-twentieth-century Mississippi*.

But Roger Pearson is definitely a candidate for the worst person I ever knew. What about you?

OMG.

Wow.

If I have someone like that in my background, I'm not aware of it yet.

The worst person I ever knew.... I'm not coming up with anything that remotely compares to your example, MA....

So he was here in Butte for about a year (1974) at Tech - dean of academic affairs and director of research. Wow.

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s. He soon moved to the Montana College of Mineral Science and Technology,

school that Mr Jodi just retired from. Just down the road from us, too. Yikes.

I've been getting together lately with some local Jewish friends and we are discussing how to combat local anti-semitism. One initiative would hire a full-time staffer for the Montana Jewish Project whose sole mission would be to this purpose.

I recently went to my first ever visit to Montana's first synagogue, here in town, to see a documentary, "Jews of the Wild West" with same friends. There was an armed guard posted at the door--hired for the event by the MJP. Very unnerving.

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What about you?

Well, coincidentally, I think I met that person just today. And very unfortunately, it's my neighbor just down the road. Not quite my nearest neighbor--next nearest.

I was riding my horse on the only level section of road that runs between our properties (the rest of the road is extremely steep and my mare is still recovering from founder and can't do hills, so it is literally the only level ground I can ride her on, except for my front yard). As I was leaving to go back into my yard, I heard yelling, but at first I didn't think I had anything to do with me, so i just kept going. I was back inside my little arena/round pen, doing exercises with her when I saw this neighbor come marching up onto my property and hang on my fence.

He asked me what I thought I was doing here. I said, "I live here." So he didn't recognize me at first. Having confirmed my name, he started yelling expletives at me calling me all manner of horrible things and said that the road (which isn't even really a road but is a right of way for the 8 properties in our subdivision) was now his, that he'd bought it from our other nearest neighbor, and that if he saw me riding on the road again he would let loose his pack of dogs to attack my horse!

By this time Mr. Pique had heard the ruckus and came to investigate. I asked him to please talk to this guy, but the neighbor started threatening me, saying he was a veteran with PTSD and I had better not cross him or I would be sorry, that I didn't know who I was dealing with. (He's not a veteran.)

I kept trying to reason with him and explain why I was on the road with my horse (which I am totally entitled to do), but he kept interrupting me to make more venomous sounding threats. Mr. Pique tried to explain to him that everyone in the subdivsion had a right to use the road, but he kept insisting it was now his private property. Mr Pique told him that his threats constituted assault, and that we would call 911. He said "go ahead." I kept myself calm for the sake of my horse, but once I got off I just lost it (this was back inside our house). I felt so unsafe having this lunatic next door.

I signed up for a database that does background checks on people and found out this guy has a criminal record for assault and battery, plus a bunch of other stuff, including violating orders of protection. A rap sheet that spans over a decade or repeated violations and arrests. I wanted to call the police to make a report, as a matter of record, but Mr.Pique said it would just further antagonize the guy, so as a compromise he's going to call an old friend who is an attorney tomorrow to find out what we should do.

Meanwhile, while I was still on my horse, the neighbor who supposedly sold him the road drives up, looking for her escaped dogs. She denied that anything like "selling" him the road happened--they changed the legal description so it more accurately fit the location of the road, but she said she doesn't own the road and has no way to sell it to him. So crazy. Mr Pique sent an email to the guy and his wife explaining that I needed to ride my horse on the road for her rehabilitation and that he would be happy to send them names and phone numbers of former co-workers at the county who could clarify for them the rights of neighbors to use the road. No word back.

This guy has a history of going "off" on people in a viciously aggressive way on social media, including our local "Next Door" forum. I have had to block him because of abusive emails and texts. I am not sure why he has targeted me. We threw them a "welcome to the neighborhood" party on our front lawn when they moved here. He got pissed off when I organized the neighborhood to do work on our road--which he and his wife refused to contribute any money to, the only neighbors who refused to participate.

Mr Pique says all will be fine if I don't "antagonize" him. I've done nothing to antagonize him! My neighbor with the missing dogs says he seems to get along fine with the men--she thinks he's a misogynist of the first water and that my taking a leadership role in the community is what pissed him off. Especially since he thinks he shouldn't have any financial responsibility for keeping up the road we all use.

Meanwhile, Mr. Pique has cleaned our .22 rifle and we are going to put locks on our gates. I'm calling a local attorney on Monday to see what is the smartest possible way to handle this.

It wasn't all that long ago, in our same neighborhood (though not our road), that a neighbor who refused to let people use a right of way through his property was found in a garbage bag, beheaded, on top of the Continental Divide (which we can see from our living room window). Killed by one of his neighbors over the road dispute. We have friends who had to move, terrified for their lives because of that neighbor.

I don't know if this is the worst person I've ever met, but it's got to be damned close.

And if anyone here has advice for how to handle this, please chime in!

And I have to add: All the other neighbors are wonderful!

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Originally posted by jodi:
So he was here in Butte for about a year (1974) at Tech - dean of academic affairs and director of research. Wow.

It would be fascinating to know how many years the people he hired taught at Tech and at USM. They could be just now retiring, having spend the past fifty years poisoning young minds.

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Originally posted by piqué:

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What about you?

Well, coincidentally, I think I met that person just today.

That's a terrible story, Pique.

Oh pique, how awful! I’m afraid I don’t have any advice about how you should approach this, but keep us posted on how you’re doing. What a nightmare.

I perhaps wouldn't call her the worst person I ever knew, but by far and away she was the most challenging. My person moved into the house next door to us in 1992 and was finally carried out of her house, screaming bloody murder, in 2022. It was a rocky thirty years for us. I talked about the situation here.

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And if anyone here has advice for how to handle this, please chime in!

pique, not sure if my experiences and observations will apply to your situation, but here goes...


My neighbor exhibited a lot of issues with getting along with people, not just us, even before her dementia kicked in. If something rubbed her the wrong way she would react completely out of proportion to the importance of the issue. We were actually on more than amiable terms for a long time (having managed to recover from an early bad encounter by deferring to and/or placating her for many years), but all it took to set her off was my politely asking her to give us a call the next time she fogged her yard for mosquitos, so I could close my windows and keep the smell out of the house. I even reiterated that I wasn't asking her not to spray, just to give us a heads up. She blurted out "oh, and you guys do so many nice things for us", and then started babble about how she didn't spray in our direction, blah, blah, blah. read: "I didn't do anything wrong/inconsiderate."

We ended the call on decent terms, but as I hung up I turned to my husband and said "I've just made the biggest mistake of my life, asking her to call before spraying". She never spoke civilly to me again. That was in 2009.

My working premise, based on years of interacting with her, was that she couldn't live with the notion of having done anything wrong; she was perfect. (Sound like anyone we know? ) If she found herself in that situation, she would reframe the whole picture by making out the other party (in this case, the wtgs, especially me) as being much worse and less considerate than she ever could have been. She was relentless.

I was not able to be in my back yard at the same time she was, which was tough because I love my garden so much.. She'd walk around her property saying all kinds of terrible things about me, pretending she was talking to her hostas but knowing full well I could hear her. She'd practically complain about me breathing too loud when I was out working in the yard. Or she would make comments to Mr wtg about his weight. It was so unsettling we simply didn't enjoy being outside when she was around.

For the last five years she was here, when it was clear that her mental health issues were worsening, I was afraid of her coming after us or our property despite the fact that we weren't actively engaging with her at all; she was unhinged. I was certain she wasn't a gun owner, so that was more than a bit of a relief, but I thought she might try to damage our property, like coming after our huge picture window with a garden tool or baseball bat. If there were a gun in her house I might have considered getting a weapon to defend ourselves.

I tend to be the type of person who thinks that things can be ironed out via reasoned and calm discussion. Totally ineffective strategy with Neighbor Lady because there was nothing logical about her reactions; they were always pure emotion. Trying to reason with her only inflamed her and made things worse. A baffling situation for me, who is kind of Spock-like in many respects.

Your neighbor clearly has issues (his previous record makes that clear), and my guess is you are simply an opportunity for distraction. He's tortured with himself for whatever reason and he's looking for something outside of himself to engage with and fight. I very much doubt that you'll be able to talk him down with facts and logic, because that isn't what's going on here. He's just hankering for an argument. Or a fight. How far he's willing to push is the wild card. I would be very careful.

Our neighbors are great, too, and were a source of support during this time. They all knew what was going on (they could hear her yelling and swearing at her husband out in the yard), and we would regularly exchange calls or texts when things got heated outside, just in case we needed to call the police.

So sorry to hear about your neighbor troubles. I can empathize and hope things don't escalate any further.

WTG I remember you talking about your neighbor. For your sake, I’m glad she’s no longer there.

And I think it’s a good example of how hard it can be to mend a relationship with someone who is, for lack of a better way to put it, psychologically challenged.

Also there’s something about being neighbors that seems to exacerbate these issues. Maybe it’s just the frequent opportunity neighbors provide? I have a friend who has a neighbor that has declared war on her, for something similarly inconsequential. She has had to call the police numerous times because things got dangerous. They’re in a holding pattern at the moment. But she has no solutions either.

it is helpful to hear how you handled this, wtg, even though i doubt i can use your example effectively in my situation. i'm so sorry about what you went through. 30 years of that is a long time. how did you handle the stress?

mr. pique received an email back from the neighbor saying all i have to do is apologize to him (????) and there won't be any trouble. this is crazy ****.

i could just go ahead and do that, despite being very clear to us that i don't owe him an apology, but the history behind this suggests that all that is is giving him a permission slip to continue to be abusive. not that not apologizing will change anything either.

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Originally posted by piqué:
it is helpful to hear how you handled this, wtg, even though i doubt i can use your example effectively in my situation. i'm so sorry about what you went through. 30 years of that is a long time. how did you handle the stress?

mr. pique received an email back from the neighbor saying all i have to do is apologize to him (????) and there won't be any trouble. this is crazy ****.

i could just go ahead and do that, despite being very clear to us that i don't owe him an apology, but the history behind this suggests that all that is is giving him a permission slip to continue to be abusive. not that not apologizing will change anything either.

What are you supposed to apologize for? Would it mean you can use the common road without harrassment, or is that still “his” road?

Omg, Pique.

Man, I feel lucky. I've met some jackasses, but nothing like this.

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Originally posted by AdagioM:

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Originally posted by piqué:
it is helpful to hear how you handled this, wtg, even though i doubt i can use your example effectively in my situation. i'm so sorry about what you went through. 30 years of that is a long time. how did you handle the stress?

mr. pique received an email back from the neighbor saying all i have to do is apologize to him (????) and there won't be any trouble. this is crazy ****.

i could just go ahead and do that, despite being very clear to us that i don't owe him an apology, but the history behind this suggests that all that is is giving him a permission slip to continue to be abusive. not that not apologizing will change anything either.

What are you supposed to apologize for? Would it mean you can use the common road without harrassment, or is that still “his” road?

asking them to keep their dogs inside at night so that i can sleep. that was three years ago. it never went any further because rather than have a normal neighborly conversation with me about it, this man let loose a stream of invective in texts and emails such that i had to block him. i did talk to the animal control officer and found out that there was literally nothing i could do. even though letting their dogs bark continuously all night is against the law, no matter the reason, there are really no penalties or consequences that have any teeth.

these people hold bible studies at their house, btw.

he didn't address in the email whether he still considers this "his" road. he just said hostilities would end if i apologized. but of course, that isn't true, because it takes literally nothing to trigger him. he was being abusive and threatening long before i asked him to keep his dogs in.

sort of like wtg asking her neighbor to let her know when she was spraying. it wouldn't take anything more than that.

i feel we should be documenting what is going on. very unfortunately i didn't have my phone on me when he came over yesterday. i wish i had videotaped him. i won't make that mistake again.