#111 / 2009 Tour 5 Spring: Nashville's Ninth Ward

NASHVILLE'S NINTH WARD

#111

Well it has really been something to be home. Just a few weeks ago I sure wasn't expecting to be sitting in the bedroom where my sister and I watched our mother take her last breath or standing on the front porch of the house I grew up in. And the rain has been of biblical proportions here, like sobbing angels.

My sister has been inexhaustible helping me out and with her help I really think we are going to pull this all off. We were down at the new Kroger this week when someone said "Pay Yum is that you?" They make my name two syllables here in the south and it was old neighborhood friends who were the absolute bedrock of my youth here in the Vultee Boulevard area. Reba and Edwin DePriest, Debbie and I, all stood there probably for the first time all together in forty years. It felt so good to see them, the only couple, close couple, from my the neighborhood who stayed married. They ride Gold Wing motorcycles.

So we all visited, Reba came by the house a few days later, and the old days all come flooding back. The neighborhood has really changed. Of the four empty houses on my corner, I am back and my neighbors have returned to their house after getting it trashed by renters. My place looks pretty good compared to theirs.

But it's going to be a real hurdle to get this pulled off even by July, yet alone June. So I may not make all those house sitting gigs back in Las Cruces, but we'll see. The one big opportunity where this couple wanted to make the repairs themselves so I could be on my way --- never heard from them again. Only one other couple has been by since then. But I just keep doing what I can. I have cleaned up the yard, swung a sledgehammer all week, hauled about two tons of rocks and concrete pavers to create a sidewalk in the front and back steps by the kitchen. I even climbed under the house! Feel really accomplished about that. I was afraid there would be a big puddle of water there, but I got lucky there.

We have reinstituted the bucket into our lives. My sister showed up today with a plumber, oh we have a long way to go there. Everything is out of the bathroom, no toilet, no sink. and it is torn down to the support beams.

Major, major work has to be done there, and then after the bathroom the roof has to be done. So it's gonna be a while, but as in keeping with my new "don't freak out" philosophy, I am taking it one day at a time and it's all falling together slowly.

An insurance adjuster came by and I will get enough money to put on a new roof and get some more siding along the side of the house that had wind damage. So it seems like I'm going to be able to pull it off but I will have to wait on that insurance money to show up. You know, the check in the mail.

So far we are visiting old friends and it's all good, far happier than I anticipated.