June 2, 2000

Dear Margrit,

Thank you for your letter.

I am sorry my blocking the right garage door offended you.  As I may have mentioned on the telephone, when I opened it, the door disintegrated under my pull, and required several minutes and an assemblage of tools to reassemble into a shape that was closeable. I had - and have - no reason to assume that opened or closed with your hands the garage door would have been more likely to remain intact; and I have reason to doubt that you would have been able to reassemble it as I was barely able to do. Presumably you would have solicited a friendly local volunteer to repair the door, but quite possibly without success, and what you would have done if the entire door had to be replaced, I suspect that you have not seriously considered. It is certainly your privilege to take risks in your own affairs, but with respect to the preservation of this house I consider it my prerogative to take such preventive measures as satisfy my standards of care, as distinct from yours, even when these standards stymie your determination to shelter your old Volkswagen in a garage. At the time that I blocked the garage door I had not noticed your written request refrain from doing so; after I discovered your note, I judged it to be so ill-considered as not to warrant my removing the block.

Related to our garage-door controversy is your arrangement to have Lindy Sheets place his old red Chevrolet in the driveway adjacent to the retaining wall. As I explained to you some weeks ago, the consequence of your blocking the driveway was to prevent Margaret and me from walking around the house during our "vacation", as we like to do. It also made it necessary for me to carry various tools which I needed a much longer distance around the east side of the house. When I related to you our unsuccessful efforts to have Lindy move the car, (unbeknownst to us he had taken a trip to the Middle West,) you replied airily, "Oh, I should have told him to  leave it behind the garage!" unaware or indifferent to the circumstance that immobile behind the garage, as you proposed, the car would have been an even greater nuisance, preventing from doing much of the exterior painting to which in fact I devoted my vacation.

My objection to a car on our property not owned by us, registered or otherwise, is that even if we had keys to move it, we might,  for any one of numerous mechanical causes, not be able to do so without, and perhaps even with, repairs which only the owner can authorize and which I at least do not wish to pay for. Furthermore, such a car could not legally be driven off the premises.  Therefore I have asked you, and I ask you again, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES to arrange for an automobile not belonging to yourself to be parked on our land. And even in the case of vehicles owned by yourself, two is more than enough, and I ask you NOT to purchase a third because it would be in my way and I don't want to have to junk it.

When I spoke with you on the telephone, and asked that Lindy Sheets' car be removed, you promised me: "I will take care of it." But apparently you failed to do so.  Subsequently I called Jeanne, to repeat my request, and she also promised to have the car removed.  I hope that she has done so.  I understand that I have the (legal) right to have it towed, but I also understand that such an action would destroy our relationship to Lindy, and, dependent as we are on him and Jeanne for help, might in fact lead to a situation that would make it impossible for us to maintain the house at all.

I conclude that if we are to continue sharing the house, our dealings with each other will have to become less emotional and more formal; and in this context your letter, whatever cathartic virtue it may have had for you, is inappropriate.  If I am to remain ultimately responsible for the maintenance of the house, - and to that responsibility I see no alternative, - you must accept my prerogative in good faith - the breakdown of the garage door was not the result of an act of sabotage, - to take preventive measures to preserve it; and while during the term of your occupancy you are free to use the property in any manner that pleases you, you must not encumber it with alterations, such as Lindy's automobile in the driveway, which would interfere with Margaret's and my use of the property.

I do not ask for your affection or your gratitude.

I do ask for your cooperation.  I ask that you conduct yourself as would any responsible tenant of a valuable estate, thereby making it possible for us to continue to use the house together as Mutti and Papa would have wanted us to.

Dein Jochen