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Neville's cauliflower
Monday, January 16 2017
Late this morning, Gretchen and I drove out again to Brewster Street near the Kingston High School to look at another house, this one a run-down three-story structure immediately across the street from the "cream puff" we'd seen on the 12th. Today's house had none of the curb appeal of that one, though they were both built at around the same time (this one in 1911). Through the years, it had lost most of its Edwardian flourishes, though the posts holding up the porch were still the spindly turned columns of the period. Had there been any gingerbread details, they'd been stripped away long ago, and the exterior clapboard had been covered at some point by asbestos tiles, now grimy and grey. The front porch wasn't too bad, though birds in a bird's nest in an overhead light had left a pile of bird feces that clearly dated back to warm weather, probably the spring. Nobody had swept it since then. Inside, the house was disgusting, with peeling paint, accumulated kitchen grease on dingy surface finishes, and a lot of unswept dirt and grime. It was all so uniformly shabby that it was hard to know how one would even begin to make the house into a place anyone would ever want to live. Further hindering our imagination was the temperature in the house; the pipes had been drained and the house left to cool down to whatever the average temperature of the season happened to be. On this particular day, that temperature was noticeably colder than what it was outside. But there were good things about the house: it had crown molding and door trim from a time when people thought there should be little circles where things join at right angles. There were built-ins, some kitchen things dating to Art Decco times, and there were even a number of windows featuring modern double-pane glass. The basement needed a good sweeping and had ancient utilities (such as a massive octopus of a furnace), but there was no evidence of water or foundation problems. The thing about old houses is that they've survived a lot of the things that can destroy a house and are now in equilibrium with their landscape. Indeed, things had been a lot better for this house as recently as 2006 (a year or so before the peak of the real estate market), when it had sold for $165,000. Now it was on sale for $69,000 after having gone through foreclosure.
While we were there walking through the dingy rooms and checking doors that didn't quite open, Nancy showed up to join us in our tour. She and Ray aren't really looking for a new house, but sometimes they talk about perhaps moving to the country, and they're always up for a real estate adventure.
Outside, the house had a long, narrow back yard with a picket fence so ruined that a neighbor had built another one parallel to it. The yard's main feature was a gnarly stump from a felled tree of heaven (aka "ghetto palm"). From what we could see of the roof, it was in bad shape, though unless it's leaking, it's the kind of thing whose repair can be indefinitely deferred.
A sound real estate principle is to buy "the worst house on a good block." This house definitely qualifies. If we can restore some of its glory, that neighborhood will be the envy of Kingston.
While in town, the three of us decided to get lunch at Outdated. It was pleasant enough outside if one were in the sun, so that was where I waited for Gretchen to finish some framing-related task at Catskill Art & Office Supply. A skinny homeless guy showed up and begged semi-coherently for money through the gaps between his teeth (every other one appeared to be missing). "I don't have any money," I declared, adding, "we're in a cash-free economy now." But then he wanted me to follow him to a restaurant to please buy him a $4 bowl of soup. That was absurd, but he genuinely seemed hungry, so I took pity on him and found him two dollars (I only had three) and a quarter and a penny in my wallet. At that, he announced he would be getting a slice of pizza instead, and he charged manically across Wall Street. He rather reminded me of a younger version of my brother going through a skinny phase. And he wasn't even the only stranger-accoster on Wall Street during the brief time I was out there. A short time later, Kingston's new "friendly weirdo" showed up with his big smile and plump red-cheeked face. His thing is to just begin cheerfully talking to people (usually women) about something they have or are wearing as though he has known them all his life. They're always taken aback, but they usually play along.
Nancy ordered the "taco time," I had a vegan tempeh reuben, and Gretchen had some sort of tofu sandwich that she found disppointing.
I'd had three cups of Outdated coffee, so I was pretty energetic back at the house. I augmented this with a recreation Martin Luther King Day 25 mg dose of amphetamine salts, the kind I grind in a mortar & pestle. I had the day off, but I really wanted to get that email server code working. So that was what I worked on from late afternoon until 3:00am. I didn't get it working, but I learned enough to finally know what I needed to do (I think).
In other news, at some point this evening I found Neville the Dog jealously guarding a cauliflower heart by near the woodstove. Gretchen had made a vegetable & polenta dish for dinner, and that was a byproduct. Normally one doesn't consider cauliflower something that dogs care much about, but Neville was serious. He was so serious that when Clarence the Cat happened by, he suddenly made a snarling lunge, terrifying poor Clarence and sending him hiding under a chaise lounge in the living room. Gretchen was so upset about Neville's bad behavior that she wrestled that cauliflower heart away from him (a dangerous operation, given the crushing power of Neville's jaws) and tossed it into the pines east of the house.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?170116 feedback
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