Man gets back at neighbors by painting home brilliant green

[Cass]

Juan Mata's maroon Kenworth semi-truck means a lot to him. The Lockport man keeps a picture of it tucked inside his wallet. He used to proudly park the truck in the driveway outside his home.



So, when his neighbors called police last summer, complaining that the truck was noisy and an eyesore and the police made him move it, Mata, who says none of that's true, got mad.



Then, he got even: He has painted his house a brilliant shade of fluorescent green.



"Hideous," one neighbor calls it.



Another, Debbie Seitz, says it's so bright, "The flight traffic would be able to spot Lockport."



Serves you right, says Mata: "Well, I thought if they said, 'The truck's an eyesore,' I'd give them a real eyesore."



Some tickled pink



The color is so, ah, unusual, that, when he bought the paint at a Home Depot and told a store employee what it was for, "The lady there couldn't believe it. She said, 'That's not outside paint; that's interior paint.' "



The police made Mata move the truck because of an ordinance that bans trucks from being parked in residential areas. But there's no ordinance that restricts what color people can paint their houses, city administrator Larry McCasland says. "It's crazy, isn't it?" McCasland says, laughing.



Mata's home, which he rents from his father, has become sort of an attraction, drawing people who don't even live in the neighborhood.



"And we get a lot of compliments, too, right, Dad?" says Mata's daughter, Lori. "They'd stop and say, 'I like it.' "



For his annoyed neighbors, Mata's taste in exterior home paint has had a couple of benefits: It slows traffic and serves as a handy landmark.



"I say, 'Just go to 14th and Washington, and I live right across the street from the crazy green house,' " says a neighbor who'd give her name only as Dawn.



Mata says the color doesn't bother him. "Inside here, I don't see it," he says.



http://www.suntimes.com/output/news...eenhouse17.html

[Pearl Harbor]

Good for him! I've been to Lockport. Not a very upscale place at all. I wonder if his neighbors ever bothered to talk to him about his truck.

[Hawke]

Ahh...

I'm curious what the property values in his neighborhood have dropped to...

[Paula]

can't deny some-one for trying to make a livin'. good for him, your not suppose to make trouble for your neighbors, even if they aren't normal? don't believe in making trouble unless you ask for it...thank you.

let them stay up all night driving a rig, their eyes won't notice the color of the house, they will need sleep right away?

[Peg]

I have to applaud him. I think it was a great pay back LOL. Some people will invent reasons to complain. Why not give them a real reason to?

[Paula]

Too many pick at others for nothing, this is a big problem in our world these days. Leave people alone who are not bothering you. This has happened before, people who have too much time on thier hands to condem others, well now the color will remind them every time they look, they should have kept their mouths shut!