Janie Polay has posted this no-trespassing sign and a tweak at her neighbors outside her Lowell home.
SUN / MICHAEL PIGEON Bikini whacks
By CHRISTOPHER SCOTT Sun Staff
LOWELL Several cute little scarecrows are stuck in the bark mulch alongside Janie Polay's driveway. They're the colors of Halloween orange and black.
Next to the festive scarecrow is a small placard featuring a provocative photograph of Polay wearing a tight cut-off T-shirt, and short denim shorts with the top button undone.
Under the picture is the caption: "While an original is always hard to find, she is easy to recognize."
Polay puts the photograph and another much larger picture of herself straddling a bike in a bikini out every day in the driveway of her Westview Road home to spite her neighbors.
Several of them have complained to City Hall about Polay's wont for wearing the skimpiest of bathing suits while sunbathing and gardening.
"We're not talking just an ordinary G-string here," says neighbor Dottie Hayes, who runs a home day-care operation. "We're talking dental floss."
But Polay, a divorced mother of two and grandmother of four, says she stays on her property and can dress the way she wants.
"The way I dress is nothing unusual, this is up-to-date fashion," says Polay, a model. "I don't think they would have a problem if I was a 400-pound woman in a thong."
It began with a few complaints to Mayor Rita Mercier. But what started out as a tiff among neighbors has snowballed into a controversy involving Lowell police, the city's Inspectional Services Department, and even Middlesex District Attorney Martha Coakley.
It's controversy the affluent and peaceful Highlands neighborhood with its quiet, tree-lined streets and manicured lawns isn't used to or happy about.
"It's caused quite a furor," Hayes sighs. "It's been such a friendly neighborhood but yet it seems every time I look out the window lately there's a police cruiser outside."
Polay and her companion, Bill Morse, moved to the two-story contemporary in the Highlands in April from the Chelmsford Village condominium complex in Chelmsford.
The move went smoothly, and the couple settled in nicely. Then the warm weather came, and Polay a tall, slim, statuesque woman with long blond hair broke out the swim trunks.
"She'll spot someone coming and intentionally bend over wearing a G-string bathing suit," says an incredulous Dan Reardon of 167 Westview Road, who has complained to Mercier about Polay. "It's just inappropriate, particularly with the kids, parading around like that."
Reardon says on July Fourth, Polay pedaled her bicycle down Westview Road wearing a red, white and blue G-string bathing suit.
Reardon has three children, including a 10-year-old son. Marybeth Smith of 188 Westview Road has an 11-year-old son.
"We live in a very sexually orientated society and most parents, like myself, prefer to ease their kids into it," says Smith, who called Polay's behavior "offensive."
"This woman, with her behavior, is fast-forwarding everything," she says.
Polay loves to sunbathe. She was considering donning the G-string to lay out one day last week when the temperature hovered around 70. The back of her lot is wooded, meaning she can tan only in her side and front yards, within view of anyone driving or walking by.
Smith, who has called police about Polay, says she's particularly upset when Polay sunbathes in provocative manners.
"I have no problem with anyone sunbathing," Smith says. "I have a problem with someone doing it in the very sexual nature that she does it."
Polay, though, says her neighbors are overreacting.
"I absolutely did not do the kinds of things the neighbors are saying," she says, growing agitated. "Here we are, living in a new house. We're supposed to be having fun, shopping for new furniture and everything, but I feel like bawling over this."
Polay says she was very upset when someone, presumably an irate neighbor, left an anonymous handwritten letter in her mailbox urging her to put some clothes on for the benefit of the children.
"If (they) think they are going to get me to be less visible ... What am I supposed to do? Stay in the house and dress the way they want me to dress?
"This is my life and this is the way I live it," she fumes.
Polay claims she is being harassed, particularly by a neighborhood family living directly across the street. She says children in the family toss balls in her yard and ride their bicycles in her driveway.
Consequently, Polay put up "no trespassing" signs and installed a video camera trained on the driveway. She has called the police on the family several times, the most recent being on Oct. 7, when Polay complained about kids trespassing.
The woman whose family lives in the house, Gail Byrne, says she's not harassing anyone, but declined to discuss the matter further.
Police Superintendent Edward Davis III, who lives nearby, as do many other current and former city officials, says he has discussed the situation with Coakley. They've determined Polay is not breaking the law.
"She's pushed it right to the edge, no doubt about that," Davis says. "But there's nothing we can do about it."
Davis, who is battling gang problems less than a mile away in the Lower Highlands, wishes he didn't have to devote any resources to such an issue where people are behaving in a "childish" manner.
Mercier says she's been in contact with Building Commissioner Joseph Guthrie about the pictures in Polay's driveway. They might be in violation of city sign ordinances.
"I share the neighbor's concerns," Mercier says. "But as far as her behavior is concerned, she is not breaking the law even though her clothing is of the barest minimum."
Not everyone on the dead-end street, however, is upset.
"This is all about jealousy," says Sherrol Motta, who lives across the street with her husband, Joseph. "She is not parading up and down the street like this and what she's wearing is what women wear to the beach everyday. If these mothers and fathers are really concerned about the sons, they ought to look under their beds."
-- Anonymous, October 21, 2002