Neighbor kicked me out of my own cabin — and then found out who I really am…..

I always considered myself a calm person, the kind they call unassuming, not because they don’t stand out, but because they don’t stir up trouble. I don’t make scenes, don’t argue with cashiers, don’t file complaints with the board. Maybe that’s why they took me for a pushover, someone easy to bend to their will, but they were wrong.

Because each of us has a limit, and beyond it is a completely different story. My cabin came to me from my grandpa. A classic tale, a little house near Irving, Texas, a plot of ten acres, old cherry trees, a peeling sauna, a metal shed.

Everything was in disrepair, but I felt good there, after the city hustle, like a breath of fresh air. That’s exactly where I went in the spring of last year, when I needed to recharge after the divorce and layoff. The first week I just sat on the porch, drank tea from an old pot-bellied kettle, and inhaled the smell of damp earth.

It seemed like silence, paradise. But paradise turned into hell when she appeared on the horizon. Olivia Peterson, the newly elected chairperson of the homeowners association.

Olivia Peterson was a woman as sharp as a dull axe. Around sixty, always in a tracksuit, with a jangling bunch of keys on her belt. The type who commanded roll calls at scout meetings in childhood.

She appeared on my plot on Monday morning, when I was just rearranging bricks by the old grill. «And who might you be?» she asked, without greeting. I straightened up, brushed off my hands, and calmly replied.

«The owner. This is my grandpa’s cabin.» «Inheritance.

All documents are in order.» «We’ll see about that,» she said and, turning, left the plot as abruptly as she had come. The next day there was a lock on the gates.

Not mine. In my shed there was a new sign. Municipal property.

Entry prohibited. And on the gate a note from the homeowners association board, where in black and white it was written that the plot had been unlawfully occupied and was subject to eviction. I called, knocked, wrote, but there was no response, neither from the homeowners association board nor from Olivia Peterson.

No one wanted to talk to me. And the neighbors? The neighbors just silently looked away, as if afraid to be next. I had to return to the city.

I took a thick folder from the shelf, which my grandpa had once lovingly assembled. Wills, extracts from the County Recorder’s Office, certificates from the land registry, receipts for dues from the 1990s. Everything was in place, but paper is one thing.

But what these papers mean to people who decided they have power is quite another. I went to the office of the homeowners association board. A small room in the local community center.

Behind the desk sat the same Olivia Peterson. «We have office hours on Thursdays,» she grumbled, without even lifting her eyes. «I have documents…