Plenty of authors have described buildings as living, breathing entities with souls. I always found the idea intriguing, and perhaps I even felt it a time or two. For a few years in my twenties, I lived in an apartment with a revolving roster of roommates. I was one of the last to move in before the house dissolved, but I was very aware of the history of the place. We'd sit around in the evenings and recount, retell, re-imagine and remember the life of the apartment (nicknamed the Temple of Jank, or ToJ) over it's nine or ten year lifespan. But the apartment was in a building that may have been a hundred years old. It had a life before us, and one after us. I remember laying in my bed on sunny mornings and seeing hand prints on my bedroom walls. Sure, it had been repainted, but cheaply. And a couple of tenants previously had been a cutter, and once redecorated her world with bloody handprints...
Chilling, sure, but intriguing! I was never creeped out by that knowledge. It was one more thing that made the ToJ what it was. I'm very curious if the current tenants can see those prints when the sun is just right.
It's been a lot of years since I last met a home I recognized as it's own personality. I love my family home, where my mother lives, but I love it because my family is there. When I'm there, I am wrapped up in all that is them, not "it." the house white the one car garage, cedar hedges and crab apple trees. My mother's hostas don't wave me up the driveway, my mother herself does that.
Imagine my surprise, then, when happenstance introduced me to....well...what I hope will be home. There's some history here, so bare with me as I lay it out.
It's no surprise to anyone familiar with the industry that some construction workers are shady. They are hardworking guys who have the potential to make a lot of money, both because their skills are rare and the average person doesn't really know what they're worth. Money can corrupt as well, as it multiplies.
My little brother graduated from a four year accounting program at our local college and promptly gave up the financial world for manual labour. He wanted to be his own boss, and to boss others around. He worked and learned for a few years and was soon running his own crew. He formed a business and had some pretty big setbacks in his scrabble to get ahead. Some of them were spectacular failures. Still, we the family, supported him. We want to see him succeed in everything he does.
Not everyone who he has worked with over the years have the same hopes and respect for him, though. Some of the guys he's worked with have been straight up criminals, taking advantage of his trust, his money and sometimes even his name.
Some time last year he got involved with a guy who found a lot of excellent work for Little Brother. He just took a huge cut of the earnings for the pleasure of finding that work. It was a hard year for him and in the end, he and this shady fellow severed all contact.
Fast forward fifteen months, and Little Brother gets a phone call from the local hydro company. They tell him that there is a problem at his house in a nearby small town. They need to get into the house to investigate what has gone wrong there. Little Brother is rightfully confused. He doesn't own a house anywhere, let alone in this nearby small town. The hydro representative forwards him on to the police.
It turns out that Shady Character had used his closeness with my somewhat disorganized Little Brother to gain access to signed documents and personal information. He stole Little Brother's identity and purchased a house in an older neighbourhood right at the edge of town. The mortgage was in Little Brother's name, as well as all of the utilities. What a situation!
Unfortunately (though perhaps, maybe fortunately...) Shady Character decided to use that property to run a grow operation, which drew the attention of the police. He was soon arrested and the operation was shut down. All utilities were cut off to the house and, once the investigation was over, the police handed over the mess to Little Brother. They'd been surveiling Shady Character, after all. They knew that Little Brother hadn't been to the house, nor had any of the money gone through his accounts. He was the proud owner of a grow op.
We, the family, were dismayed and excited at the same time! Neither my brother nor I have been able to get our life together enough to purchase our own homes. Now one of us owned a house! We had to go and see it.
Cue one drizzly, cool morning in early September of 2016. I met the house.
My first view of her was pretty non-exciting. She's reddish brown brick, a split level ranch, and perhaps fifty or sixty years old. She has a big picture window overlooking the front walk and I remember thinking it made her look like a sad cyclops. One wide, staring eye, unable to come to terms with what had happened to her insides and her people.
The lawn was overgrown and a concord grape vine was slowly devouring her on her left front corner. I followed a paver stone walk around her right side, flush against her single car garage, around to the back of the house. There we discovered a set of stairs that lead down to the basement.
The police had been thorough. They had cut holes in her ceilings and pulled out the extra ventilation the growers had installed. Her basement fireplace had been excised and lay on the floor. There were dozens upon dozens of plastic planters with sawed off stems dried out all over the floor. There was fertilizer spread on the bare concrete. She was a mess inside.
There are steps you have to take in order to gain entry to a grow op house and we were there to take them. Part of our mission was to get started on the environmental assessment of the inside. The other part, a secondary plan, was to take care of her outside in order to mend fences with the neighbours.
Everyone knew what had happened there, of course. Everyone was suspicious. One neighbor clarified where the easement was that ran between our sad little cyclops and his own property. Just in the nick of time, as we'd been about to trim back on of his trees!
We build a big compost heap and emptied all of those damn pots into it, as well as the bulk of another concord grape vine that had swallowed up the back deck. We raked up the apples that fell from an old apple tree who's fruit was small and tart and wonderful.
It was while we were cleaning the yard that I felt it. A subtle shift away from excitement for Little Brother to...comfort. A feeling of being at home. I started to wonder about this place.
The helpful neighbor had told us that it was very sad, what had happened to the original owner. Something had necessitated a quick sale to Shady Character, but that's all we know. I imagine that she died there, maybe out in her gardens. She had obviously loved them. That's just what I hope happened, because we could all be so lucky, right?
So in the months since then, we've ripped out the carpet and thoroughly washed all the surfaces. We've contracted an environmental engineer to assess the damage so that we can get permits from the city to reenter and start working on the house.
Little Brother has a plan - an investment property. He will use his excellent construction skills to carve my little sad Cyclops into two apartments - a three bedroom upstairs and a two bedroom in the basement. I can't help but think she won't seem so sad with people living in her again.
He's had realtors come and look at her in order to give him some expert advice. The basement apartment will need the most work, as there is no kitchen down there, nor a full bathroom. It needs a lot of work, as the lower part of the basement didn't even have drywall.
The upper apartment, though, was really only in need of some patching, new floors and a good clean. It wouldn't take long to get it ready for renting.
Then the holidays happened and we didn't hear back from the city. Weeks ticked by and there was no "all clear." Finally, I demanded Little Brother look into the hold up. He was paying a mortgage on an empty house, after all. A house without electricity or heat, through a Canadian winter. I felt sympathy for my little Sad Cyclops. I envisioned neighbourhood kids smoking and drinking in her bare naked basement. I saw nests of mice and raccoons taking up space in her cracked-open walls. Poor girl! This wasn't at all what she deserved! She was situated in a lovely neighourhood, surrounded by families. She needed someone to put flowers in her gardens and mow her lawns! She needed someone to bake apple pies from her yard tree. She needed someone to shovel her walks and sing along with music inside all of her rooms. She needed....me.
And I really need her. But that's a story for another time.
