HOA COPS INSTALL SPIKE STRIPS ON MY PRIVATE RURAL FARM ROAD, “WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON? THIS IS MINE, WHY YOU DID THAT?”

Two weeks later, I was served with a lawsuit.

Carolina Estates HOA versus Cameron Mitchell. They were trying to force me to join their association and pay every cent of their imaginary fines. Diane was almost gleeful when she called me with the news.

“They actually filed it,” she said, and I could hear the smile in her voice.

“This is going to be fun.”

The day of the hearing, I put on my best suit and met Diane at the courthouse. Patricia was there, sitting in the gallery in another powder-blue pantsuit, flanked by two other board members who looked like they’d never disagreed with anyone in their lives.

Their lawyer was a thin man with a nervous mustache who kept shuffling papers like he was searching for a miracle.

When it was his turn to speak, he stood up and made an argument I still can’t believe anyone thought would work.

“Your Honor, the plaintiff argues that because Mr. Mitchell’s property is bordered on three sides by Carolina Estates communities, it should be automatically considered part of our jurisdiction. The visual continuity of the neighborhood depends on uniform standards. One non-conforming property disrupts the entire aesthetic.”

Diane rose from her chair, a single sheet of paper in her hand.

“Your Honor, may I approach? I have county records showing that Mr. Mitchell’s property predates Carolina Estates by exactly twenty years. Additionally, his property only borders the development on two sides, not three. And most critically, there is no recorded covenant or agreement that ever brought this property under the HOA’s authority. The plaintiff’s argument is not just legally baseless, it’s factually incorrect.”

The judge, a gray-haired man named Judge Morrison, put on his reading glasses and examined Diane’s documents for what felt like an eternity. Finally, he looked up at the HOA’s lawyer with an expression that could only be described as exhausted disappointment.

“Counselor, are you aware that filing a frivolous lawsuit can result in sanctions against your client?”

The mustache quivered.

“Your Honor, I believe there is a genuine dispute here.”

Judge Morrison removed his glasses and set them down with a deliberate click.

“There is no dispute. There is a piece of paper from 1975 that clearly establishes this property’s boundaries. You are suing a man to force him into an association he never agreed to join, over a house that was built before your client’s development was even a gleam in some developer’s eye. This case is dismissed with prejudice. Furthermore, I find the plaintiff’s conduct amounts to harassment. The plaintiff is ordered to pay Mr. Mitchell’s legal fees plus five thousand dollars in damages. This court will not be used as a tool for bullying.”

The gavel came down with a crack that echoed through the room. I turned around in time to see Patricia’s face cycle through about six different shades of fury before settling on a deep, blotchy crimson. I smiled at her. I couldn’t help myself.

“Have a nice day, Patricia,” I said as I walked past her row.

She didn’t answer. Her knuckles were white where they gripped her purse.

Now, this is the part where some people think I became the villain. I prefer to think of it as creative self-expression.

The day after the court victory, I drove to the hardware store and bought ten gallons of exterior paint in a color called “Sunburst Yellow.” It was the brightest shade on the entire color wall. The kind of yellow that could probably be seen from low earth orbit. I spent the entire weekend painting my house.

Every wall, every trim, every inch of wood that had ever been brown or beige. When I finished, my house looked like a giant stick of butter had landed in the middle of North Carolina.

I stepped back, surveyed my work, and felt a deep, satisfying warmth spread through my chest.

But I wasn’t done. I drove to three different garden centers and bought every garden gnome I could find. Gnomes with fishing poles. Gnomes with little wheelbarrows. Gnomes playing tiny guitars. A gnome mooning the street with plaster butt cheeks. I arranged them across my front lawn in careful, deliberate poses. Twelve of them, each one facing toward Carolina Estates like a tiny ceramic army.

Then I strung up lights. Multicolored string lights, the kind that blink and twinkle in no particular pattern. Not the approved warm-white variety that the HOA mandated for all their residents. Mine cycled through red, green, blue, and yellow in a chaotic, joyful dance.

A few days later, I was out hanging the last strand when a Mercedes crawled past my house. The window rolled down just enough to reveal Patricia’s face. She didn’t say a word. She just stared at my house, at my gnomes, at my lights, and then drove away at exactly the speed limit. I waved.

“Looking good, right?” I called after her car.

The coup de grace came the following weekend. I had a 1987 Camaro that I’d been restoring in my garage for years. It was a beautiful machine, but it needed work. The HOA rules I’d read in their community handbook—purely for research purposes—stated that no vehicle repairs were allowed in visible areas.

Cars had to be parked in garages or driveways. So I pushed the Camaro out of the garage and parked it right in the middle of my front lawn. Then I popped the hood and went to work.

Every Saturday morning after that, I was out there with my tools, music playing from a portable speaker, a cold drink in a cooler, and twelve garden gnomes keeping me company. Sometimes I’d crank up classic rock. Sometimes I’d sing along. Badly. On purpose.

One afternoon, a woman walking a small dog paused on the sidewalk and stared at the spectacle.

“That’s quite a statement you’re making,” she said, a half-smile tugging at her lips.

I wiped grease from my hands and grinned.

“I call it post-court-victory bliss. You like the gnomes?”

She pointed at the one with the bare plaster bottom.

“That one is my personal favorite. My husband is on the HOA board. He nearly choked on his coffee the first time he saw it.”

“Tell him I said hello,” I said.

She laughed and continued her walk. Not everyone was so amused. A man in a golf shirt stopped one day and shook his head at me from the sidewalk.

“You know you’re driving down property values for the whole neighborhood, right?” he called out.

I straightened up and wiped my forehead with a rag.

“This property isn’t in your neighborhood, friend. That’s kind of the whole point.”

“Still affects us. You could be a little more considerate.”

I walked over to the fence and leaned on it.

“Considerate? Like your HOA was considerate when they tried to steal my house? Like when they sent that guy to climb my fence and take pictures of my backyard? That kind of considerate?”

He didn’t have an answer for that. He just muttered something under his breath and walked away.

This went on for six months. Six glorious, yellow, gnome-filled, Camaro-on-the-lawn months. Patricia drove by at least once a week, always slow, always glaring. I started timing my yard work to coincide with what I assumed was her daily routine. If I happened to be repainting a garden gnome when she passed, even better.

Then life threw me a curveball. I got a job offer I couldn’t refuse. A project management position in another state with twice the salary and none of the humidity. I accepted on the spot. The house went on the market, and within two weeks, a young couple made an offer.

Their names were Jake and Elena. They came to the final walkthrough with wide eyes and barely suppressed grins.

Jake pointed at the yellow siding.

“Is this color… intentional?”

I nodded.

“Every brushstroke.”

Elena walked among the garden gnomes, laughing.

“These are incredible. Do they come with the house?”

“All twelve of them,” I said.

“I’ll even throw in the mooning one for free.”

Jake pointed at the Camaro, still sitting on the lawn.

“And the car?”

“That comes with me, unfortunately. But the spirit of defiance stays.”

Elena looked at her husband and then back at me.

“We heard about the whole HOA thing from a neighbor. Is it true they tried to take your house?”

I nodded.

“Every word.”

She looked at the hot pink front door—a recent addition I’d made just before listing—and smiled.

“We’re thinking of adding a vegetable garden in the front yard. Maybe some sunflowers. Really tall ones.”

I handed her the keys.

“You two are going to fit in just fine around here.”

The last thing I saw as I drove away with the Camaro on a trailer behind me was Patricia Whitmore standing on the opposite sidewalk, staring at the pink door with an expression that could have peeled paint. I honked twice and waved out the window.

“Take care, Patricia! Stay hydrated!”

She didn’t wave back.

I kept in touch with Jake and Elena for a while. They sent me photos of the front yard vegetable garden they planted right where my mother’s azaleas used to be. Tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, and a row of sunflowers that grew taller than the fence.

They painted the mailbox sunflower yellow again, just like my mother had done all those years ago. The door stayed hot pink. They added a few more gnomes, too. One of them was holding a tiny protest sign that said “Free Lawn.”

Some people online, when I tell this story, say I was the jerk. They say I should have just moved on after the court victory and let sleeping dogs lie. That I punished innocent neighbors for the sins of their HOA board. That my yellow house and my garden gnomes and my Camaro were acts of petty revenge that brought down surrounding property values out of sheer spite.

Maybe they’re right. Maybe I was petty. But here’s the thing: that lawsuit cost me sleep, money, and months of anxiety. I had to prove, in a court of law, that my own childhood home belonged to me and not to some woman in a powder-blue pantsuit who’d never done a day’s manual labor in her life.

They tried to take my house. Not my car, not a few hundred dollars, but the roof my parents put over my head with their own two hands.

So when people ask me if I regret the yellow paint, the gnomes, the lights, the Camaro, I tell them the same thing every time.

“Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”

And then I show them the photo of Patricia’s face the day I honked goodbye. That picture is worth every cent of the five thousand dollars the judge made them pay me.

Last I heard, Carolina Estates had a new HOA president. Someone less interested in conquering neighboring properties and more interested in, quote, “maintaining reasonable community standards.”

Jake and Elena’s sunflowers are still standing. The gnomes are still smiling. And somewhere in my new house, in a state with a lot less humidity, I keep a single garden gnome on my front porch.

His name is Victor. He’s holding a tiny victory flag. And every time I see him, I remember that there’s nothing in this world quite as satisfying as watching a bully realize they picked on the wrong man.

My mother would have loved it. She always did love yellow.