ANNISTON, Ala. (AP) — Etheleen Jones doesn’t sit on her front porch at night because the lights on the car lot across the street shine like a spotlight on her front door, not only making her uncomfortable, but also afraid.

“It’s just so daylight at night; it frightens me,” she said. “I love to sit out there when it’s raining. It’s just so quiet and calming, but I don’t now. I shut the door at night.”

Jones said she’s afraid someone will see her and the furniture on her porch and that might entice a thief to break into her house.

Jones moved into her house on Quintard Avenue as a new bride in 1947. The house, in a residential area once known as Oxana because of its location between Anniston and Oxford, backed up to a wooded area, and it was just like living in the country, she said. But as Anniston grew, it swallowed up Oxana, and her quiet neighborhood became the Motor Mile.

Jones’ house is now surrounded by car dealers. Right next door to her is Kia Store Anniston. Directly across the street is Mullinax Auto Sales, which is flanked on either side by Anniston Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram and Cooper Chevrolet. They all have lights, and she knows they need them; she just doesn’t want them shining in her house.

Jones has made concessions to deal with her neighbors. One year, Volvo, now Kia, put in a red neon strip of lights that shone in her windows.

“Our house was just like it was on fire at night,” she said.

To solve the problem, her late husband, Durwood, built a trellis to block the light.

But some problems have been too difficult for her to solve on her own, and that has brought her to the last three Anniston City Council meetings.

At both meetings in June, Jones complained about cars blocking her in her driveway and lights from Cooper Chevrolet that violated a city ordinance by shining into her home. She said she had already contacted Cooper Chevrolet, but nothing had been done.

Greg Montgomery, of Cooper Chevrolet, declined to comment.

The city put up tow-away zone signs that seem to be helping keep the cars from blocking her driveway, but the lights have been more of a problem, said Bob Dean, Anniston’s director of public works.

“I had my electrical crew go over there and with permission from Cooper Chevrolet to lower the lights,” Dean said. “It did result in a little bit less light. Not as much as Miss Jones would like to have done – so it’s one of those things we’re looking into to kind of correct this problem.”

The lights, which are supposed to be angled down, are angled as much as they can without rewiring them, and that is out of the scope of the city’s responsibility, Dean said.

The city’s ordinance requires that lights be no higher than 20 feet and should not shine on residential property. These lights are violating that ordinance, but before they were installed, the plans should have been approved by the city’s Planning Commission, Dean said.

“Any time you do any type of work like that, especially lighting, there’s got to be certain restrictions on the kind of lighting you have, the kind of signage you have and whatnot,” Dean said. “To me, I look at it this way, every time we have an issue about something, that’s the time for us to kind of review the policy and procedures, and possibly look at changing them up — maybe they’re not covering something, something’s kind of falling through the cracks.”

It’s far from the first time Jones has brought her problems to the attention of her neighbors and city officials. In 2001, The Star published a profile of Jones, detailing her efforts to get both city and state government to do something about the problems auto dealerships caused her.

Dean said the city hasn’t forgotten Jones, but Jones is frustrated.

“I’m not going there again,” she said of the council meetings. “They’re not going to help me.”

She said she doesn’t want to move. She had an offer years ago to sell her house to Sunny King, which owns another lot nearby, but she turned it down. Jones loves her house. In the backyard, she has a garden and a patio. She watches opossums as they wander through the wooded area in back of her house. All she wants is a little more privacy.

“I wouldn’t move for nothing,” she said. “I’ve got seven people who want to move in here after me.”