Young vandals and bad parenting

We have been having some vandalism here on the base. Twelve-year-old kids who wait until their parents are asleep, and create havoc from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. They have slashed an above-ground swimming pool, a trampoline, and attacked a woman down the street twice. We have very little police protection, and after 45 minutes when the sheriff got here, of course the kids were gone, and the sheriff asked the lady if she put the slashes on her arms herself. Wow! There is nothing we can do--everybody knows who they are, but the parents don't give a damn, and they have to be caught in the act. Clint, my fav maintenance man, says he's going to spend the night here sometime and "beat the shit out of them." He will do it.

We seem to have lost good parenting skills. For parents to look the other way when their kids are doing stuff like that means that the parents just don't care. I'd have gotten quite a licking if I'd ever done anything like that! But in this case, the parents should have to answer for the destruction. They probably don't have any money anyhow. Oh, well, school starts soon.

But there are good kids here. One little boy came to the door yesterday seeking donations so he could go to the Lutheran camp. He's obviously Indian and cute as can be, with ebony shining hair. I said, "Didn't I already give you money for camp?" He said that was for the Salvation Army Bible Camp, and this is for the Lutheran Bible Camp--back-to-back camps. I wrote his step-dad a check for $10, because he didn't know what to do with a check made out to him, and he thanked me profusely. I have a sign on my front porch which says, "Neighborhood Witch" and he thought that was very funny.