A Black Feather, A poison pen... ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- \"This is the house we used to live in / One look before they tear it down.\" So anyway, next weekend i likely won't be out and about as the family is getting together to do some fix-ups on our old house. The neice who has been living there and her husband found a bigger, better place in a nicer neighborhood. Frankly, i think they should have waited a little longer for the encroaching gentrification to set in and drive the property values back up, but since their kids are approaching school-age, i can see why they don't want to send them to the school we all went to as kids. Originally, i had thought about taking the place back myself, but the place has too many bad memories for me and is not as conveniently located for me as this little "apartment." There is that and then there is also the matter of the no-account, low-rent, speed-dealing neighbors i would have. Tommy, JJ and Charles across the street in their respective houses, and the unholy trinity in the house next door to our immediate east: Stella, "Big Boy" Paul, and their equally useless offspring Anthony. Stella is also part of the reason that the family is cutting its losses and selling the house. She and my neice are embroiled in a little bit of a feud and somehow that unholy heifer (may her kidneys implode in dialysis) managed to get the city pursue a matter related to a couple of project cars that my "nephew" was restoring in the back. Even though the car situation was remedied, the city is notoriously picky about enforcing these types of complaints, even more so, ironically enough, than it is about prosecuting mid-to-low level pushers or half of my old street would be in the joint already, especially the people i mentioned above. So, knowing that we would have to keep the place to a standard of spotlessness that neither the house nor the neighborhood is known for anymore, we've decided to offload the house. So, next week is a painting-party as well as whatever other quick, on-the-spot renovations we can pull off, and then we have to alternate babysitting the house for the time that it spends before we can clear all the paperwork to get it put on the market. It's a safe enough bet that it will get bought. There's been something of a boom in the market there and even though it's a shitty neighborhood, there's been enough growth that the vacant lots i used to run wild in as a kid are now all covered with newer houses that have sprung up since the first few months after i left it. I want to say i'll miss the place, but in retrospect, i can't really say that i do. that whole period from my 18th birthday back in 1990 on to the day i left it in the first couple of weeks of 98 was more bad shit than i care to cope with. I don't wonder why i spent a year as a junkie early in that period. The ghosts and echoes of that place would probably make me it's next casualty and i also like the fact that i won't ever spend another morning in the summers waking up to the smell of the pesticides from the crop-dusters over the cotton fields. Nor will i ever lose sleep to the sounds of Manzanita Speedway during racing season. All in all, perhaps the best thing that ever happened to me was the day that i walked in to find the place burglarized and trashed beyond my capacity to repair any of it at the time. Sure it was the situation that rendered me effectively homeless for a while, what with my job situation at the time being what it was. But if being driven out of that place managed to preserve what few little shards of my sanity i had left, then i guess it can't be all bad, can it? I may or may not ramble some more on this subject, though frankly, if i had the time and the money and a good sledgehammer, i would knock that whole fucking block to its foundations 9:05 p.m. - 2003-03-30 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||
|
||||||