If I may wrap this up...
Fillmore...Lincoln...Buchanan...Northeast is awash in streets named after US President's ending with (I think) McKinley right before you hit Stinson. In 2004 standards it was a far drive for my partner, commute-wise, to head to their bread and butter gig... but my guts and my dad's voice and my heart was pressing unconventionally toward NE Minneapolis. We'd bid on a few places and fell in love with 2 specifically- however fate was great and handed-us an inspector/appraiser that was honest and transparent and...weird....
He was elderly and dotty, armed with a toolbelt and kit and telescoping ladder. He was tanned and blinked a lot like a camera had just flashed, and made weird jokes and analogies about homes being like people. He managed to talk us out of two offers because of damage he discovered while scampering up his telescoping ladder and explaining the cost analysis of rot and damage around windows you may not have seen.. It could have been a complete blast of bullshit, of course. My father would insist on being there for the inspections having been an inspector himself. They'd chat amiably afterwards, for too long, while we all stood on a lawn watching them have their chinwag.
I liked them a lot. He'd make a weird comment and blink, then say "I guess you could say I have a weird sense of humor...". Occasionally he brought his niece/apprentice with. SHE was pretty gorg and laughed at his weirdness, and would go up on roof tops that were too steep for him to navigate. Her demeanor, I wouldn't realize until later, reminded me of the staff at the hospital that helped deliver my kid. Hair up. Tan from the elements. Fantastic laugh. "All so pretty" as my wife remarked.
When my realtor and I made an appointment and eventually walked in to the (President) Taylor St property, there was a family of four living there- technically six (If you count the two pugs)- It was early September and it was an older house. It ticked off a list of things we believed we wanted, in spite of having a strange pet smell about it and cracking in the walls and...filth. The kitchen was old with a 50 year old antique stove, no dishwasher, rusty pipes and the bathroom (Last updated in 1979) tiny. And maybe you *could* rough in a bath around that basement toilet on the floor, but does that really count as "two bathrooms?"
When the inspector came by, of course he blinked a lot, scribbled a lot in our homeowners book, and chatted with me...he said: "Well, she's from 1918. If *my* back looks this good when I'm 90? Then I'd be happy to take up gymnastics. But I have a weird sense of humor."
The roof was new. Furnace. Electric. A/C. Even the model-T garage with swing out counter-weight doors and leaning like a parallelogram was fine. Offer made. Offer accepted. Neither of us made enough to support a zero-down loan, but we split it between a HELOC and 30 year. My credit passed.
We had a house. *I* now had $180K of debt to my name. I would raise this amount by $20K taking out a box store home-improvement line of credit. And tens of thousands of dollars to maintain the place after that. I didn't think this would be the one I share... but I have a very intense memory of my dad and I raking in the fall before I moved in...the silver maple in the back yard had dumped 45 bags worth of leaves and we were thigh deep trying to get them all in piles.
"This is the best part, Mikey! Welcome to home ownership!"
It's a very warm Fall day.... I'm sitting on my back stoop off 46th and Lyndale. It's November, and I had just spent 4 hours at the closing and my forearm was tired from signing so much. I remember the former owners were only there to sign off and leave, and they chuckled in a formidably sinister way. I was in debt with a mortgage and HELOC, I was home from my 2nd job at the formal wear store and it was 9 o'clock at night and I was almost entirely through an entire magnum of Bella Sera Pinot Grigio and feeling the weight of the enormity of the debt pressing on my body.
I was drunk. I was unhappy. I was hyperventilating and hearing the airport traffic. I was now a homeowner, for better or for worse.
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