We got Gunsmith elected to VP of our mostly dysfunctional HOA, more than ten years ago, in order to stymie whatever bullspit the more vocal, "correct" homeowners might come up with. This was shortly after the current president called a quorum for elections because he didn't want to do it anymore, after they'd chased off our street THE guy who was the most generous and helpful to all in the aftermath of '96's Hurricane Fran, and during which meeting the outgoing president made note of our bug-zapper, way up on our property hanging from a tree; violation, you know.
The man who originally bought all this land, our little "subdivision", separated it into lots and subsequently sold them off was a fella by the name of
Wallace Kaufman; he also wrote the covenants for the HOA, such as "outdoor lights must be hooded to protect the quality of the night sky"; increased to 25 feet (from the county's 10) the property-line buffer (this caused us no end of trouble when building the garage); and decreed the wooded areas of each property were to be left as nature made them, iow, no clearing out the brush and the dead wood. We live on a heavily wooded lot, and for anybody who doesn't know, Mother Nature is a very messy gal, frequently dropping tree branches and limbs willy-nilly, and occasionally, the whole damn tree.
The worst of the busy-bodies have since died or moved away; the few left know they're not going to get any enforcement help from the rest of us. Most just ignore Kaufman's rules, live their lives, don't bother one another and there's been no trouble of which I'm aware. Most of our properties can't be seen from the street or by neighbors anyway -- heavily wooded.
Kaufman's responsible for a number of such properties in the area around here -- ours is not the one named in his book. He's since come to his senses, somewhat, after actually trying to live as he prescribed, and eventually took his "moderate environmentalism" out West. I'm sure they're delighted to have him.
It was hard to find a place without an HOA when we were looking 20 years ago, so we settled for the least restrictive one within our price range, but the covenants have irritated me since Day One. A while ago, I wanted to initiate a move to have them legally voided, but Gunsmith believed at the time that doing so would be setting up a fight over what was mostly ignored anyway, and not to be calling attention to it. So, we wait, because they're due to expire within the next couple of years anyway, unless renewed. Over my dead body.
Wow. I got long-winded.