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The Animal House
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The Animal House |
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amusemi Senior Member
since 2001-12-08
Posts 1262A State of Disarray |
Once upon a time I lived in a wonderful barn shaped house, nearby the railroad tracks. The house was built in 1906 and had once been the residence of railroad workers who needed to bunk for the night. I had three beautiful children, but I was a smoker, so I would sit on the porch and enjoy my cigarettes. The neighborhood was low rent. An ancient strip mall ran parallel to the railroad station. We, in the sixth ward, would take our kids to the barber whose shop was located in the mall. Then there was the neighborhood bar where you could go for a drink, cash a check, or get ice for filling your cooler for fishing. The pawn shop had great older movies that you could buy, keep as long as you wanted, with no late fees, and then pawn when you were tired of them. The street I lived on was established when people still relied on horses to get around, so my road was not much wider than an alley. Outside my bay window was a row of attached garages that had once been stables. Further down the street was a place the locals and police called The Animal House. The back of that house faced our street. The place was a flop house for the FTRA (Free Train Riders of America), known for drugs and outrageous parties with bon fires in the back yard. In previous years the place had had quite a reputation, but the owner had made improvements to satisfy city ordinances. Often I would recognize the faces of people I had seen panhandling in front of Wal-Mart walk past my house on their way to the bar from the Animal House. I loved my home. It was the first one I had ever owned. For a month in April vibrant tulips would spring out of the ground and take over the flowerbeds that lined the house. The previous owners had planted hundreds of annual flowers, but my favorites were the tulips. One day I was sitting on my front porch, enjoying a cigarette, and a white truck drove down the street and stopped in back of The Animal House. There were a couple of shovels attached to a rack along the back of the cab. A man got out and went into the back yard. I was glad to see him. The place really needed to be landscaped something fierce. I finished my cigarette and went back into the house. Later that afternoon I took my youngest to the store. As I pulled down the street I passed two of those unmarked government sedans. They are always so obvious and I never understood why they remove the hub caps from them. It’s not like it’s going to hide what they really are! These really inconspicuous guys in suits and ties were out on the sidewalk talking on those boxy cell phones that were high tech in the mid-nineties. Somebody was going to jail. Finally, the Feds were going to clean the place up. I returned from the store twenty minutes later and the Feds were still outside on the sidewalk. I helped my son out of his safety seat and brought the groceries into the house. I made a quick lunch and then headed out to have a cigarette. As I sat there the man in the white truck came down the street carrying two orange cones. As he passed my smart-arse mouth went off and I jokingly said, “So, are you digging up a dead body?” The man just gave me a dirty look, walked back to his truck and took out two shovels. He disappeared behind the hedges that lined the property and was out of view. I felt foolish for spouting off and went back inside. My son and I watched television for awhile and out of curiosity I would occasionally walk to my bay window and peer down the street. To my horror the next vehicle I saw on my street was the coroner’s hearse. It was 3:00. When the realization of what was happening finally hit, all I could think of was my two children who would be walking home very shortly. I put my youngest son in the stroller and walked to the school two blocks away. I met my children and walked them the long way home, so they wouldn’t pass the backyard of the Animal House. They pulled her out and placed her in the hearse, with children walking home from school passing on the sidewalks. Later accounts in the newspaper told of how she was a battered woman who had been murdered by her husband. She had been interred eighteen months earlier…six months before I moved into the house. The real irony of the story was that she had walked to the bar nearly every day. In order to do so she had to pass one of the other businesses in our neighborhood…the intake offices for the battered women’s shelter. My credit's not Bad...I'm just protecting myself from identity theft! |
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JamesMichael Member Empyrean
since 1999-11-16
Posts 33336Kapolei, Hawaii, USA |
Enjoyed reading this...James |
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