Historic District Adjacent

Well, because I didn’t think finishing up grad school was enough work, I decided last month that I was going to buy a house, too. What I set my sights on was an 80 year-old Craftsman Bungalow located in an old, yet “up and coming” part of downtown Gadsden. “Up and coming” is code for a “mixed” or “diverse” neighborhood. Not the kind of neighborhood that most white Southerners driving through would stop and say, “Wow, I like the looks of that street!” As a matter of fact, it is the kind of street that honestly does have a “wrong side,” or at least a wrong section. What I mean by that is this: 10th Street is bisected and chopped up in a number of places by different streets throughout the downtown area. The particular side of 10th on which I bought, is a section bisected by Randall (Randall is the street that leads me to a number of my favorite people and places); it is the southern dead-end tail of South 10th Street. And although there are decoy houses at the beginning of our street (houses in ill-repair that make people think our street isn’t that fabulous), evidently this section of 10th is the good section; the bad section of 10th is a tiny bit farther North, and is…well, according to some folks around here, not as good, I suppose. Because I have friends who live on the not-so-good part of 10th, I won’t speak real ill of it. And I won’t speak real ill of it because I really never figured out what made it not-so-good.

Now, our part of So. 10th is really quiet. Our neighbors are a mix of young and old, singles and marrieds, blacks and whites, furred and feathered. This is a neighborhood where children play, dogs bark and people tend their yards. Folks stop by (as evidenced last night when across-the-street neighbors Janice and Nathan walked over to introduce themselves), and birds fly overhead regularly on their way to the bird sanctuary, which is a stone’s throw (a very steep stone’s throw) from the house. Not all of our neighbors are alive. There is an old cemetery in the woods somewhere a bit east of the dead end, and there is the beloved feline of the previous owner, Ms.Vinson who is buried in the backyard of our place. At the closing yesterday, Ms. Vinson’s daughter told me to be mindful if I do any gardening out back; they were not able to bury the old girl very deep. That is a piece of information I will heed. I feel it proper to honor the dead, whether it is two-legged or four.

The house was built in 1929, and is all-brick construction. There is a rather pastoral-looking full brick garage behind the house that is impossible in which to get a car, and a large fenced-in back yard that slopes away from the house (according to Ms. Brannon, Ms. Vinson’s daughter, the back yard was a peach orchard at one time). My two favorite features are the schmancy porte cochere, and the deep dark porch. I’ve been on that porch many times now, at different times of the day, and I have ALWAYS felt a cross breeze. Ms. Vinson rhapsodized yesterday about how when Mr. Brannon (Ms. Vinson’s first husband) was house hunting for the two of them, she never even saw the inside of the house before she agreed with her husband to buy the place. Evidently, while Mr. Brannon was looking at the inside of the house, she was sitting on the porch falling in love with the cross breeze. What Ms. Vinson (then Brannon) did not see until later were the living room, dining room, three-bedrooms (the third is small enough that one questions its distinction as a room), one bathroom boasting a jade green tub that looks like a spearmint throat lozenge, an efficient galley kitchen, mud room (which would’ve been a porch then), and spacious basement. The narrow plank oak hardwood floors, currently covered in carpet (but not for long), would have been exposed, and the plaster walls & ceiling, concealed by paneling and ceiling tile at the moment, would’ve been in their Craftsman glory. The yard is exploding with flora: hydrangeas, azaleas, nandinas, money plant, ivy, fig, forsythia, sweet shrub, and shamrock. There are two pecan trees in the back yard, and two enormous pine trees gobbling up the sidewalk and obscuring the front of the house (they will have to go, and be replaced with trees more suitable to the size and architecture of the house). Ms. Vinson must’ve become quite the gardener during her 53 years there. Slim and I will take up where she left off…

Listening to Parachutes by Coldplay and eating a good deal of fast food, which I will put a stop to once I finish up my class work in the next two weeks. Graduation is at the beginning of May. I will not be walking in the ceremony. More on that later. And yes, I really do mean that I will be posting to my blog more often. I’m surprised that my posting of this blog didn’t shut the whole innernets down…