My wife, Jean, and I
lived in this house since 1986. When we
first obtained a loan for the house the mortgage broker told us, "This is
your starter house. You should sell the
house in a few years and get a larger house." I guess we are bad listeners because we are
still here.
The house is
situated in a quiet neighborhood without a through street. The cardinal-points keys are the road to the
north, a blue house to the west, a line of overgrown arbor vitae trees to the
south with a pieced together wire fence the owner in the yard to the south
installed to keep his dog in his yard and promptly got rid of the dog, and a
yellow house on the east.
South
I approached what I
thought was the owner of the ugly arbor vitae trees to the south a few years
ago and suggested that we jointly cut the trees down. The arbor vitae are his trees, I think, but I am not sure of the property line and I
am too cheap to pay a surveyor to determine the property line. After discussions with the south property
owner, the ugly, overgrown arbor vitae remain because he claimed he just
survived cancer and did not want to add the stress of removing trees to hinder
his recuperation.
East
The yellow house to
the east has gone through a succession of owners but it has continued to be owned by somebody generally living in
the house. Since we lived here, I
remember five owners.
The original owner
was a divorced woman with a son who liked to construct car trailers in the
garage. Occasionally large semis loaded
with steel would drive up our little
street and drop steel girders off in their driveway. The son and
a friend would then move the steel girders into the garage, cut them
with acetylene torches, and construct the trailer using paint containing 100%
volatile organic compounds. Besides the
paint smell and the noise, he and his partner would build car trailers well
into the morning. I went to the City of
Madison Planning Department one day and asked whether it was legal to build car
trailers in a garage in a residential zoning area. The city planners told me it was not. When I told the son he should not build these
trailers he leveled a torrid of obscenities at me. Shortly after the verbal
abuse, I then formally complained to the
Planning Department which then investigated.
Later that month he knocked on our door and conceded that he was wrong
and stopped building car trailers in the garage.
The son was the same
guy who wanted to pull shrubs from the front of the house. The shrubs were there at the time it was
built and firmly anchored. He hooked a
rope to the shrubs and the other rope to his back car bumper without attempting
to dig out the shrubs. He assumed
horsepower was greater than root power.
He then placed the car in drive and gunned the car. The car left with the rear bumper laying on
the ground next to the shrubs and him in the street with the car shaking his
head. Most of the neighbors saw his
attempt and it made for great story telling for years to come.
The next owner was a
Madison Police Department (MPD) cop who got married, became sick of his shifts
as a cop, and is now a security officer at Meriter General Hospital.
The third owner couple had two kids and stayed
in the house only as long as the husband,
Mike, obtained his PhD in mathematics from UW-Madison after which he was
hired by Harvard University or Columbia (one of those two small eastern
colleges) to teach mathematics. Mike did not like anything other than
mathematics and so was not good at yard or house upkeep. When they left his wife found out they were
expecting kid three (Surprise!).
After they left the house was rented for a year to a Mormon
couple with two kids who tried to buy the house from Mike. Mike wasn't very good at selling houses
either and the Mormon couple and kids bought another house before Mike could
make up his mind.
The current
residents, a couple and son, rented the house for a year and decided to buy the
house from Mike. Mike got his act
together and sold the house to them although he had to sign the final papers
while taking a sabbatical in Germany.
The new owners, another Mike and
his wife have a 4 year old son. The new
Mike is a gear-head and likes lawn work
as much as the prior Mike. The new Mike
spends a lot of time in his garage working on one of their four cars.
Although the yellow
house to the east has been interesting, the most interesting house is the is the blue, chaotic house located to the
west.
West
The blue house to
the west did not begin chaotic. When we moved into our house in 1986, George
and Helen owned the house. George worked
for the Department of Revenue (DOR) and had been retired when we bought the house. George was either an attendant or pilot for
the Wisconsin Air Service before he worked for DOR. Believe it or not, at one time Wisconsin had
its own airlines. In pictures he
appeared to be a steward and not a pilot, although he never said. Helen stayed
at home and did cross stitch. George, at one time, was a major force in the
Madison Scouts, a drum and bugle corps of some acclaim. They had a violin showcased in a case in
their main room. George apparently
played the violin also at one time.
George and Helen
were always there. We needed them one
time when our second child wanted to be born in the middle of the night. George happily came over after being called
at midnight and watched the oldest daughter while we were in the hospital. Jean
and I were always invited to their house during Christmas for a Christmas
drink. Jean and Helen had a Bailey's
Irish Crème. George and I had a
beer. That beer was probably the only
beer George drank all year. One year I
convinced him to drink two beers at this annual event which made him tipsy and
invoked Helen's anger at me.
As George moved on
in years, he could no longer do many of the outside chores. So
gradually I began mowing the lawn, cutting the hedge, and shoveling the
snow. George passed away in a nursing
home in 2002.
After George's
death, Helen was then left alone in the house which caused her nearest son,
Doug, living in Minneapolis a lot of headaches.
Helen never drove a car and so Jean would take her grocery shopping. Doug would travel back to Madison every other
week to fix things in the house for Helen.
Gradually Doug's wife got tired of Doug's trip to Madison and convinced
him that Helen should sell the house and enter an assisted living
facility. Helen was not sold on her
daughter-in-law's idea but gave in and sold the house to a trust in 2006. The
first attempt at placing Helen in one of these places in Madison was a dismal
failure because Helen was not cooperative and Doug spent more time in Madison
after moving her than when she was living in the blue house. Doug then decided to move her to an assisted
living facility in Minneapolis closer to
Doug. The selling of the house and
moving to Minneapolis broke Helen's heart and she died within a year of selling
the house.
When the trust took
over the house, guys who looked like former convicts employed by the trust,
came in and stripped the house of any furnishings left by George and
Helen. All of the carpeting and many of
the appliances were junked or replaced. After that we have seen a series of
renters paying a price listed on a lawn sign of $1,450 per month.
The first renters
were a black couple, Tanya and her male partner -- never could determine if
they were married. They were in the
house for six months. One day Jean and I came home witnessing five MPD police
cars surrounding the house. According to
the cops, Tanya was not happy with her partner and went after him with a
knife. He had serious injuries from stab
wounds on his back and was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. Some of the neighbors speculated he was
dead. We were interviewed by a MPD detective and asked questions about how they
lived. Apparently her partner either
rose from the dead or made a miraculous recovery because he was sweeping the
front stoop two weeks after the knife incident.
The couple were gradually evicted
from the house for nonpayment of rent.
The next renters
were a nonprofit agency which housed two young guys in wheelchairs. The agency had people staying with the
wheelchair guys 24/7. The wheelchair
guys looked at the house as a prison and the women attendants as prison
guards One day one of them made a break
for it in his motorized wheelchair when
no one was looking. The attendant
discovered the breakout and stopped him at the end of the block. The nonprofit's residents and attendants
resided in the blue house for a year and a half and then one day they were
gone. The movers came in the middle of the night, moved them, and left.
The third series of
renters was a Veterans Administration (VA) guy by the name of Kirby. Kirby came
from Rockford, Illinois and decided the VA hospital in Madison was better than
the one in Rockford. Kirby had one leg amputated in a VA hospital before moving
to Madison. Jean became acquainted with
him one day when she heard a voice and saw him lying on his back and not able
to reach his wheelchair in his driveway.
He had left his car, missed his wheelchair, and was lying helplessly in
the driveway. Jean helped him into his
wheelchair. Kirby also locked himself
out of his house one day and we had to help him break into the house by
bypassing the lock.
Kirby was divorced
and then remarried. His second wife
committed suicide before he moved
Madison. After lying on the driveway and locking himself out of the house,
Kirby realized he needed help. Kirby then hired his first wife to be his
caretaker. The first wife and her two
older sons then moved from Rockford to Madison to take care of Kirby at the
house. Mary, the first wife, appeared to
work hard in keeping the house in order.
Kirby was a bird lover and had six
cockatoos. One of the cockatoos escaped
one day and was not seen even after they
performed an all-out search of the neighborhood. I think our resident hawk found the cockatoo
and had an enjoyable meal. The two sons did not work and apparently stayed in
the house viewing porn on the Internet all day while drinking beer they
purchased from our local Super America gas station located within walking
distance of the house.
Kirby smoked and
drank. He appeared to have a great time
when he lived in the house. In July
2015, Kirby became sick and was hospitalized.
He needed surgery. He went to the
Madison VA hospital for the surgery and the surgeon discovered he was full of
cancer and then closed him up. According to Mary, he died on the operating
table. Mary and the two sons could no
longer afford the rent and moved shortly after Kirby's death.
The current
residents are a single mom and kids. The
single mom has a boyfriend who lives with her and the kids. We are unsure how
many people actually live in the house now because we see a number of different
people coming and going from the house daily.
The boyfriend has a rather noisy late model car that he uses to
transport various people back and forth to work and school. His taxi service starts at 4:30 am during the
work week and the noise of the car at that time in the morning has not made him
popular with any of the neighbors.
We are not sure what
to expect from these west-located neighbors.
On January 30, 2018 at 8 pm we had five marked and one unmarked MPD
police cars parked along our street interested in the residents of the blue
house. They viewed the house from across
the street for an hour and then left.
With everything that
has happened in the blue house and after seeing a street full of MPD police
cars, I hope not heeding the mortgage broker's advice about moving up to a
different house does not come back to haunt us.
