Nearly 60 years ago my family settled into a home on the south side of Columbus, Ohio in a typical blue-collar neighborhood. Back then there weren't many upscale houses around, only some that looked a little nicer than ours and very few that presented better curb appeal than them!
Throughout the years the neighborhood and those close by progressed into one of the nicest in the city; many of the properties that could be bought in the 1950s for around $10,000.00 and some less than that are now fetching anywhere from a quarter million dollars to beyond a million is some cases.
My parents who passed away in the late 1990s would gasp in disbelief if they knew that the house next door to ours recently went on the market for $649,000.00, but there has been a steady stream of potential buyers showing up to check it out each time the owners host an open house so I am guessing that it will sell for something near their asking price.
Five years ago that home was purchased for under $150,000.00 but since then it has been transformed into something that looks like it was built yesterday in a posh neighborhood somewhere other than the south end of Columbus. It has become the norm around here; homes that 25 years ago could be had for 40 or 50 thousand dollars that were built before or shortly after the turn of the century and still looking very much like they did in the mid 1900's being gobbled up by investors and remodeled from basements to attics, and in so doing updating and changing everything the original builders hammered in place.
I suppose it makes sense (to them) to want to live in one of the oldest and most historic neighborhoods around, but only if they can be comfortable and impress their peers, even if the cost is removing and replacing a lot of its originality and original charm.
These old houses that surround ours now would not be recognizable to our old neighbors that have since died or moved away, albeit the shape on the outside and where they sit. Gone are all of the old rusty chain-link fences that separated yards; instead now high privacy barriers with electronic gates, and even most of the grass has been replaced by decorative rocks, gravel and meticulously laid patio pavers intertwined with mulch surrounding fancy ponds with gentle waterfalls.
Signs identifying the alarm companies that protect these properties are as abundant as door-bell buttons and it is all lit-up with security lighting strategically placed that functions to illuminate anyone with nefarious intentions while allowing everyone else to be able to gaze at the beauty even at night!
Home owners park their BMW's, Infinity's and Lexus vehicles on the same well-lit brick streets where my dad parked his 1956 Ford in the dark and where horse's and buggies and Model-T Fords before that once sat, and they come and go with absolutely no idea of how this area looked fifty or so years ago.
That is, unless they look closely at our house!
After my parents passed away I came home and purchased the house I grew up in with every intention to live out what is left of my own life in the one structure that feels more like "home" than any other, anywhere on the planet! I did not want a fancy house or one in a neighborhood unfamiliar, I wanted this one; the only place on earth that could remind me daily of the best years of my own life and the people I can no longer see, talk to or touch.
I wanted to be able to hold onto something that others allowed to slip away when they left home and found themselves in places and in circumstances that made it impossible for them to ever really go back.
In the twenty years that I was able to do this I have resisted the temptation or any faux pressure to try to keep up with the Joneses by also renovating or simply changing everything about my little patch of ground or the wood-frame house that has comforted and protected my family since the Eisenhower era, and for that reason it probably looks like something of a sore thumb to the people that never knew us or the others that were here before them.
Don't get me wrong; I don't live in a run-down shack, and through the years everything has been kept clean and what needed repaired has been, but there is nothing fancy or otherwise impressive here; just a typical old house that was built in 1904 that has been treated with appreciation and pride of ownership as a classic original automobile would be! There is an old saying "things are only original once."
I have resisted knocking down interior walls to transform it into an open-floor plan as the trend has become around me; it is still an old house with small rooms shaped like boxes and there is still only one bathroom in it. Every room in it could become a better and more functional living area with modern updates but I like them the way they are and I still need a lawn mower!
In other words, I have kept Mom and Dad's old house the way they preferred it and were comfortable in for decades. I treat my house as they did; fixing things when they break, keeping it as original and as neat and tidy as they did, and with respect for the labors of the builders and what they accomplished (without power-tools) more than a century ago.
In this regard mine is one of the very few left around that can boast of something those costing hundreds of thousands more cannot; it is one of the last virtually unmolested original properties still close by and given its occupant is now the longest residing person on the block its character is fitting.
When my friend and neighbor whose family occupied a house three-doors from mine since 1917 passed away a few months ago it left my family as the only one still here that was when we were the new kids on the block and only their house and one across the street still looks like it did back then.
No, my home is not very impressive to anyone seeking a palace or a mansion in this old south end and visitors wouldn't be nearly as impressed by it as they would be in the home next door; but it might be someday. When I am gone, and the last family member leaves, and when someone that wants to reside in a historic location with the means to spend what it would cost to erase a century of pride and nostalgia comes along I am sure it too will will depreciate in character.
No comments:
Post a Comment