Fence feud ends in death, arrest

The Washington Times ^ | June 28, 2004 | Larry O'Dell

[ijcr]

BOWLING GREEN, Va. -- Lawyer and part-time cattle farmer John F. Ames got off on the wrong foot with his new neighbors in the 1980s when he invoked a 17th-century law to compel them to pay for part of the fence around his 675-acre estate.

[cjshapi]

Hey Xena - on an unrelated note (but am sure he could do a great bit about this whole thread) I saw the Tater Salad performance movie on Comedy Central last nite. It was great! Ron White ever gets to Pgh I'm there.

[Modernman]

Ames should be turned over to the terrorists to have his head amputated with a dull rusty knife.

Easy there, tiger. We don't know what happened with these two. Sounds like this was a fued that had been going on for 20 years and these two were both equally stubborn. It's too bad somebody dies as a result, but we have no way of knowing exactly what happened. What would your feelings be if the dead man had been attacking Ames with a cattle prod?

[F.J. Mitchell]

Maybe lawyers earn that hatred-especially this particular piece of crap.

[latina4dubya]

i just read this poem last night... weird... can't wait to see this story on City Confidential...

[Straight Vermonter]

You can't even imagine how much Frost is praised to the hills here in New England. Yeeech.

[Xenalyte]

We got so lucky - Bacon Man set me on to it about 20 minutes before it started. I taped that AND Larry the Cable Guy!

"You see one woman nekkid . . . you wanna see 'em all nekkid."

[F.J. Mitchell]

"What would your feelings be if the dead man had been attacking Ames with a Cattle prod?"

I would feel the guy was Pretty stupid, taking a Cattle Prod to a gun fight.

[Xenalyte]

Were I you, I'd commit some of the more dialect-laden Robert Burns works to memory, and wander the yard yelling about wee sleekit cowerin' timorous beasties.

Oh, yeah, and talk about haggis.

[monday]

"I'm waiting for someone to demonstrate to me that expecting one's neighbors TO KEEP THEIR DARN CATTLE OFF MY LAND is "unfair."

Ames had cattle too. His fence was to keep his cattle in. I agree, his neighbors should have their own fences, THAT THEY SHOULD PAY FOR, if they have cattle.

Ames should have paid for his own fence. If he had he probably wouldn't have had any trouble from his neighbors. If someone is going to force me to pay for his fence he is going to have trouble from me as well. If you are a @sshole to people, you can expect to be treated in like manner. and I don't care what the law or the courts say. Ames could have avoided all kinds of trouble by just PAYING FOR HIS OWN DAMN FENCE!

[cjshapi]

I wasn't feeling well so fell asleep early in Larry's show. Laughed my butt off when Tater Salad mixed another drink on stage.

Those guys are just damn funny!

[1rudeboy]

Ames could have avoided all kinds of trouble by just PAYING FOR HIS OWN DAMN FENCE!

I'm not sure that's true. He paid for his fence, and the yob kept running it down. That leads me to believe that the conflict was not about the money, but the fence in the first place. Just my opinion.

[Modernman]

I would feel the guy was Pretty stupid, taking a Cattle Prod to a gun fight.

LOL.

[Straight Vermonter]

LOL mmmm haggis.

You oughta see me toss the caber.

[PreviouslyA-Lurker]

I have a friends who were having a house built for them out of town. They would go down on the weekends and paint etc. They put up an electric fence and upped the juice a little to keep people out since they couldn't be there most of the time. Their neighbor was coming onto their land and fishing their pond. For some reason he felt a need to urinate on either one of the posts holding the electric line or the line itself. Boy was he surprised!

[Old Professer]

My guess is that you would have to have been there to be any the wiser about the circumstances between Mrs. Blanton and her late husband.?

What's the difference between a lawyer and pond scum?

[Old Professer]

6'6", 235# and Drunk in Public!

[Old Professer]

Please read my tagline.

[cjshapi]

But he didn't wanna be drunk in public. They threw him out of the damn bar!

[dread78645]

There's a lot missing from this story.

Yep. Neither seem to be much of a good neighbor.

"Ames was once convicted of reckless driving for aiming his tractor at a state trooper who directed him to get off the main road, though his record was cleared after he did community service...

"All the neighbors made payments for the fence, except Brooks, who refused to pay. Dick said Brooks bulldozed portions of the fence in the mid-1990s and fired a shotgun at Ames, prompting the lawyer to hire a security guard who ended up in a fight with Brooks and testified in Circuit Court about it. ...

"Dick said the bull would go onto Ames's property, and Ames would keep it until authorities came to help take it home and then charge Brooks for its bed and board..."

"she told the caller that Brooks should not come -- each man was barred from the other's property by court order -- and John Ames asked that a sheriff's deputy come to deal with the handoff, Dick said. Ames also demanded -- as usual -- $500 for caring for the animal for two days."

""It's two hot-tempered people who couldn't control themselves," Hurt said."

Long-Simmering Dispute Turns Deadly in Rural Va.

[monday]

" He paid for his fence, and the yob kept running it down. That leads me to believe that the conflict was not about the money,"

Perhaps. I assumed that the neighbor was angry at being ordered to help pay for a fence that wasn't his. That would make me angry enough to do a little mischief to the fence from time to time.

Since in my mind, Ames was the instigator by making his neighbors help pay for his fence in the first place, whatever his neighbors did in retaliation is completely understandable to me. Like I said before, If you mess with people, you can expect to be messed with in return.