When we drove through the neighborhood to look at the house for the first time, we decided it wasn’t for us. There were young people in groups on every corner and when we stopped some of them approached our car, and some of the houses had boards nailed over the doors and windows, with spray-painted graffiti of some other language on them. Not finding it the kind of neighborhood we wanted to raise our kids in, we drove back home and called the potentially new landlord to cancel our meeting.
“But you’ve got to see this house, you can’t judge it without seeing it,” he tried to convince. “There’s a neighborhood association there now, and they’ve done a lot to clean it up, already. It won’t be long until this is a nice neighborhood again, and if you drive around you’ll notice that only some streets are still run-down. They just haven’t gotten to those streets yet, but they’re on the list. If you like the house I’ll lower the rent a hundred bucks to compensate for the neighborhood. What do you say, want to just take a look at it?”
We discussed it and agreed to meet with him and take his suggestion of driving around the neighborhood. He’d been right, there was a lot of nice streets that didn’t look inhabited by gangs or drug dealers, so we went to the house with a more open mind.
It was a gorgeous house! It was huge and had wood floors in great condition, and the kitchen was to die for. It had more than enough bedrooms and we liked what we saw, especially at $100 less than we’d originally thought. The backyard was full of car parts and a torn-down fence, but he said the neighbor was already working on taking care of that, and the front yard was plain but large, with a tree in the front. It only had two previous owners and was a century old, but was maintained well over the years. We discussed it at great length, and took the place.
Moving Day
My husband’s parents and a couple of friends helped us move, and there was enough people and trucks to make it fast going. Once we were all finished bringing items into the new house it began to rain, and I remember being thankful that it had waited until we were done. I looked out the big picture window in the living room and spotted my friend, Kathy, and my father in-law standing on the sidewalk in the rain, looking up at the attic window. I smiled and couldn’t resist the temptation, so I walked to the door.
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