Neighbors branching out

Nichole Davis

Friday, July 25, 1997 | 8:49 a.m.

A pine tree standing two stories high and threatening to fall into Gene Griffith's yard has finally, after 30 years, opened a dialogue between her and the family living behind her.

Griffith moved into her three-bedroom Milo Street home in 1962, five years before the Fouchons moved into the home behind her. She never met her neighbors in the yellow-trimmed house behind the tall, red picket fence.

"I don't really know my neighbors, and you don't when you've worked all your life," she said in explanation.

The pine tree changed that.

The tree has been there for 30 years, but Griffith didn't pay attention to it until its untrimmed branches were leaning into her yard.

Five months ago, she got tired of cleaning up the pine needles and worrying about what would happen if the tree, which is several feet from her roof, were to fall over.

"Every time we have a wind storm, I look out there and it's shimmying and shaking," Griffith said.

She girded up her courage and walked around the corner. Her neighbor, Rosemary Fouchon, 84, answered the door, but her husband, Raymond, 82, was out. Fouchon promised little except that she would talk to her husband, but Griffith was so impressed by her politeness that she decided to give it some time.

Griffith, who lives on a tight budget, cannot afford the expense of cutting the tree nor having someone tote it out of her yard. Her bad back prevents her from doing the work herself.

Three months later, she contacted Nevada Power. Couldn't they at least even up the tree, she wondered. They referred her to their tree trimming company, Davey Tree, which trimmed the branches on the Fouchon's side whenever they interfered with Nevada Power Co. lines.

But they were not authorized to cut them on her side of the tree.

"The tree condition you reported is not an undue hazard to your service wires. Trimming is not necessary," a note left on her door May 14 said.

Frustrated, she penned a letter to the SUN, asking if its "Eye on Neighborhoods" reporters could help. Eye on Neighborhoods, a SUN series since 1993, helps people who have tried and failed to get help with their neighborhood problems elsewhere.

"Do you know of anyone I can contact that can help me with this problem before we have a big wind and the tree blows over, or, as it is so top heavy, it could crack and fall over," she wrote. "It makes me very nervous."

Meanwhile, the Fouchons went on with life as usual. Rosemary, who is ill, apparently forgot to tell Raymond their neighbor was upset about the tree.

Once upon a time, the Fouchons owned the Rancho Luncheonette where doctors and staff, including Griffith, a medical office manager, would occasionally stop in, but it never connected to any of the three that they were neighbors.

Raymond now cares for his wife, who answered the door in a robe when a reporter stopped by unannounced. He says he wanted to cut the tree a year ago, but Griffith wasn't home.

The gardener refused to cut it down without her written permission, he said, because she could turn around and sue him if the tree is cut without her permission.

"If she wants to be technical about it, the part in her yard belongs to her," Fouchon said, "but I'll be nice and have it cut."

Griffith sounded grateful when the reporter called the next day to explain the situation. She planned to get the note to Fouchon post haste.

She still couldn't tell him from Adam, however, if she passed him in the neighborhood.