On the coldest morning Madison, Wisconsin, had experienced that January, Daniel Mercer stepped outside to clear the snow from his front walk and discovered his HOA president pouring wet concrete into his chimney.
For several seconds, he simply stared.
Brenda Whitmore was crouched on the snow-covered roof of his two-story brick house, wearing a burgundy winter coat, black gloves, and expensive boots that had no business being on an icy roof. Beside her sat an orange construction bucket. Thick gray concrete slid from its rim and disappeared into the chimney opening, splattering against the old bricks.
Daniel dropped his snow shovel.
“Brenda! What on earth are you doing?”
She looked down at him with the irritated expression of someone whose private appointment had been interrupted by an inconvenient employee.
“Enforcing neighborhood standards,” she called back.
“Get off my roof!”
Brenda tilted the bucket again.
Daniel ran around the side of the house, his boots slipping on the packed snow. By the time he reached the ladder she had used, the bucket was nearly empty, and a heavy stream of concrete was already clogging the chimney's narrow throat.
“You cannot be serious!” he shouted.
Brenda climbed down carefully, brushing snow from her coat as if she had merely finished decorating a flower bed.
“Your chimney violates the exterior uniformity rule,” she said. “I've sent you three notices.”
“You sent me three letters demanding that I remove it. You never sent a notice authorizing you to trespass onto my property and destroy part of my house.”
“Your chimney is an eyesore. Every other house on this street has a clean, modern roofline. Yours looks like something from a nineteenth-century farmhouse.”
Daniel looked at the concrete dripping from the chimney's brick edges.
“This chimney has been here for sixty years.”
“And the neighborhood has changed.”
“So has the law,” he replied. “Get off my property before I call the police.”
Brenda laughed.
“Go ahead. Call them. The HOA has authority over exterior modifications, and I've documented everything. If you refuse to comply, the association can impose fines and place a lien against your house.”
“You poured concrete into a working chimney.”
“I improved the appearance of the neighborhood.”
Daniel stared at her, struggling to understand how anyone could say something so ridiculous with such absolute confidence.
His house stood near the edge of a quiet residential neighborhood where snow-covered maples lined the streets and holiday lights still hung from several porch railings. Most of the homes had recently replaced their older brick fireplaces with decorative electric units. Daniel's house was one of the few that still possessed a genuine masonry fireplace connected to a wood-burning furnace.