Tales from the Crypt…uhm…the ’Hood

Now that was an entertaining dog walk!

Last night along about sunset, Cassie and I were headed homeward through the more upscale neighborhood to the west of us. It’s an area of old 1950s ranch houses, some of them very large, on large, irrigated lots: classic North Central. And as neighborhoods go, it’s seen better days.

The properties are tired, and a few need major, major fix-up. Some in fact have been purchased by affluent folks who want to live in a central location and who like large, grassy, shady lots in the center of the city. The houses lend themselves to upgrading, and because of their size and location, once a place has been spiffed up, it can be worth a lot. Values in the area hover in the $500,000 range.  Within steps, right around the corner are houses on the market for over a million dollars.

But. It’s mixed: some owners have been there for decades, and so a few places are a shade on the decrepit side.

In the middle of this small part of the ’hood is an old abandoned house, a place that must once have been a very nice property, indeed. It’s on a pie-shaped lot with a huge front yard, shaded by vast, once spectacular orchid trees. It’s been running down for years; of late it has been abandoned. The old guy who lived there alone disappeared — I assumed he’d been shipped off to the nursing home. The house is a real wreck.

So the hound and I are strolling past this pile when we come across a couple of the neighbors. I notice someone has hacked limbs off the overgrown trees and shrubbery in front and left the debris laying there, so I ask, while chatting, what’s the deal.

And from this chatty, chatty woman comes a story:

The house  is foreclosed, and it’s taken years to get that way.

The old guy was not the owner. He was living there rent-free and had been, for years. One day he just up and disappeared.

The owner himself was a tax protester, of the BAT-SH!T CRAZY variety. This guy carried one of those “sovereign citizen” cards around and proclaimed that the US gummint had no authority over him and therefore he did not owe it (that would be “us”) any taxes. He had his own bank in a DYI basement under the structure, where he would hide money. He gave out fake addresses — including a fake address for the house — so when revenooers and other creditors would come around looking for him, they couldn’t find the place. When last heard from, he hadn’t paid taxes — or lived in the house — in over 10 years.

In the attic, which you access by a trap door over the carport (rather common in these parts), there is a hidden closet. God only knows what’s in there. From that closet, you can access the interior of the house through another, hidden trap door.

Somebody recently bought the house out of bankruptcy, but they are apparently raving idiots. They hacked back the plants but have done nothing more, except they tried to get into the house through the attic. They failed to find the closet and so did not find the door into the house from the attic. So they took an ax and chopped their way through the ceiling.

The chatty lady with whom I was speaking, it develops, is a cat lady. She has eight cats that she allows to roam around the neighborhood, stinking up people’s yards and killing the wildlife. When it was observed that cats are very destructive and make a mess in the neighbors’ yards (yes…I did actually say that), she said oh, no, her kitties are good. Then she remarked that one had just killed a hummingbird. They also have several dogs, rabbits, chickens and the like. Her husband said they have 18 animals. Godlmighty.

She is enraged at one of the neighbors, who called an exterminator to remove a hive of Africanized bees that had taken up residence in the haunted house’s front yard. Just because they were swarming her koi pond, Chatty Lady thinks, was no excuse to murder all the little thangs.

He’s a retired lawyer. They’re graduates of Pomona and Claremont.

Heee! Money doesn’t buy good sense, eh?

Several of the places on the street where the haunted house stands have been fixed up handsomely. One of them was recently purchased by a young family with a cute young boy, who was playing outside when the dog and I strolled past. This is always good: more young families are moving in, and they’re exactly what an older neighborhood like this needs. The parents settle in and fix up the houses, and the young adults and their children are just grand to have around.

Heh. Betcha they don’t know they moved in next door to a level 2 sex offender.

That guy lives in another run-down house, right next door to the haunted manse. He appears to be living with his mother.

Across the street from him is yet another run-down house occupied by two young men and another elderly woman, presumably their mother. The gents have converted the carport into an automotive shop, and a fine mess that is, indeed! When you walk by at night, you can see into the front room and see that the interior of the house seems tidy and rather nice. But that garage! Lordie!!

Chatty Lady said one of the guys who lives there likes to work outside at two in the morning.

That’s good, I suppose. Keeps an eye on the sex offender, and also on the various wandering burglars who come through after dark.