What the county records did not show was any subsequent easement, any renewal agreement, any license, any recorded instrument of any kind that would give the Ridgeline Pines HOA, or any predecessor entity, any legal interest in the land the propane infrastructure occupied. There was nothing: not a filing, not a notation, not even a recorded claim.
"They have been operating as if they own it," Patricia said, "but there is nothing in the public record to support that. The easement expired, and no one filed anything afterward."
I thanked her and told her I would be in touch. I set the phone down on the workbench beside the auger bits and looked out through the open barn door at the lower field, where the white dome of the propane tank was just visible above the fence line, catching the morning light the way it always did, the same way it had caught it every morning since before I was born.
The tank was mine. The land was mine. The deed said so, and the county record said so, and the law said so. And none of that had changed because Diane Coulter had decided to call it something else. I picked up the auger bit and went back to sharpening.
Patricia sent a formal response to the HOA's letter on my behalf: measured, precise, citing the recorded deed and the expired easement by instrument number, and noting that the utility infrastructure in question was located entirely on private property to which the association held no recorded legal interest. The letter was not hostile; it was informational. It stated the facts, cited the instruments, and asked the HOA to identify by recorded instrument number the legal basis for its claimed authority over the installation.
The response came three weeks later. It did not cite any instrument number. It did not reference any recorded document. It referred again to "community utility infrastructure" and "established stewardship practices," and included a new demand: that I provide the HOA with a maintenance access key to the distribution manifold lockbox within 30 days, or the association would "exercise its right to appoint a licensed contractor to assume management of community utility systems."
Warren called me the evening that letter arrived. He had seen a copy of it; the board had distributed it to residents as evidence of proactive infrastructure management. He read me a section over the phone, his voice carrying the dry flatness of a man who had lived long enough to find certain kinds of foolishness more interesting than infuriating.
"She's telling people she's going to take over your tank, Garrett," he said.