Older relatives love retelling the stories of their glory days, although this one wasn’t too uplifting.

The uncle from this story was a lawyer who had a knack for clever solutions and wasn’t one to be pushed around.

When his neighbors built a fence on his mother’s property back in the 60’s, his fiery response left a lasting impression.

Read on for the full story.

A lawyer’s petty revenge on annoying neighbours

My uncle recently retired after practicing law for over 50 years.

He’s an awesome guy. Went through really tough times as a kid, and overcame a lot of obstacles to get where he is.

This petty revenge tale concerns something he did in the 60’s.

The relative sets the scene…

My uncle was raised outside of Toronto in King City. By the mid-60’s, he and all his siblings had moved out, and his mom (my grandmother) was living alone.

New neighbours moved in next door. English types with the accent and all that.

One day they told my grandmother that they’d had a survey done, and learned that the property line was a lot more favourable to them than has previously been thought.

They wasted no time in claiming “their” share of the land.

There’d never been a fence up before, but they had a big long wooden fence put up, encroaching about ten feet onto my grandmother’s property.

My grandma called my uncle when the construction started. He went to talk to the neighbours and explained about adverse possession and all that.

But they weren’t buying it.

The grandma asks the rest of the family for advice.

My uncle goes back and tells my grandma. She asks what should they do?

“Let them finish the fence. Then we’ll have another talk,” my uncle says.

So the fence gets finished, and then my uncle goes over for another talk.

Knocks. Neighbours come to the door.

The uncle took the situation into his own hands.

“About that fence,” says my uncle, gesturing.

The neighbours look, and see that the fence is on fire. It’s burning from end to end because my uncle bought lots of gasoline to douse it with.

The fence was being quickly consumed. No point in even thinking of saving it.

“Build it again, I’ll burn it again,” said my uncle. He walked back to my grandma’s house for dinner.

The neighbours did not rebuild that fence.

That’s definitely one way to get their attention.

Perhaps the title of the story was a bit misleading?

This type of revenge would be rather expensive today.

So their crime was…having an accent?

The neighbors clearly underestimated them.

This 60’s era revenge tale doesn’t age well in the current day.

To a lot of redditors, it kinda just seemed like bullying.

I guess they handled their disputes a bit differently back then.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.