“The Fall of the House On Mountain Street” – (in Jacksonville) – Written by Thomas.
Source: http://blog.myspace.com/thomasj1978
Thursday, January 24, 2008
The Fall of the House on Mountain Street.
Current mood: grateful
Category: Life
I guess it’s true what they say: you can never go home again.
On Monday, the 22nd of January, 2008, the House on Mountain Street in Jacksonville was torn down. After 61 years, it took mere hours to reduce my former home to rubble.
I had known for some time that the House’s days were numbered. Before I ever lived there I had seen JSU’s Master Plan, which called for the entire block to be leveled for a stadium expansion. When I talked to my former landlady in late December she told me that it was officially being destroyed in January, as the University had given her permission to remove whatever she wanted from the House before they destroyed it.
And yet, when the news of its demise came to me, it was still a shock to my system. It felt like someone had knocked the wind out of me for a moment. Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I can still feel the House around me, so large a part of my life for so many years.
I’m glad I wasn’t in Jacksonville to see the House meet its end. But I am thankful that I had one last chance to walk through the House before it was torn down. I came home just before Christmas, and my former landlady gave me permission to go through the House and remove any of my belongings which might still be inside.
Jerrod, Melissa and I made our way into the darkened house the night I got back into town. We flipped on the breakers, winding our way through the abandoned rooms. While my former roommates – excepting Tim, who had moved out much earlier – had only been evicted a few days earlier, the House looked as if it had been abandoned for years. The only clues to its recent habitation were the few surviving fish in the upstairs aquarium.
When I moved out, I gave Brad my 30-gallon aquarium because I didn’t have time to move it just then. He promised to take care of it and the fish, since he’d had aquariums before. Instead, he and the other roommates left the fish there to die, in an unheated and unpowered aquarium. Of the thirty fish who lived in the aquarium when I left, only eight still feebly moved in the water, the rest having succumbed to the cold and lack of aeration. With their air supply cut off, the fish had slowly suffocated in the water, leaving only these hearty few to survive. Ironically, an act of vandalism – the dumping of an entire container of activated aquarium charcoal into the tank – likely saved their lives by absorbing some of the carbon dioxide and toxins in the water. Thanks to quick thinking on Melissa’s part, we saved the fish, and I was able to come back the next day and remove my aquariums. After spending a few weeks with Melissa in Birmingham, the fish are now safe, healthy and happy with me here in New Orleans.
The rest of the house was trashed, not surprisingly. Graffiti sprayed on the walls, inside and out. Trash, beer bottles, stopped-up toilets, broken windows – all of what you’d expect if a group of teenagers had broken into an abandoned house to get their kicks. One sad little man had broken apart pallets in the basement to board up his windows, another left a box of PG-rated skin rags in his room, and torn-apart stereo equipment filled another. Light fixtures torn from their sockets, the handrail wrenched from the stairs, and the dining room chandelier still sitting upon the floor, never reconnected after I left. A note I had left my roommates upon moving out had been carefully saved and pinned to the front door with an appetizer pick.
I came back the day before I left, to pick up odds and ends not destroyed in the chaos: Frank’s old computers in the basement, a few Christmas decorations, the aquariums, other bits and pieces of my life there. After my friends helped me load everything up, I went back in, ostensibly to check one last time for anything overlooked, but really just to say goodbye, to enjoy one last time alone in the House.
For just a moment, the squalor disappeared: candlelight flickered, a piano tinkled, glasses clinked, and peals of laughter filled the rooms. Old friends, wonderful memories, unforgettable times, they all came rushing back – the past overwhelming the present. This was, after all, the place where I met and became close to so many of the people who shaped my life. Too many to name without fear of leaving some out. This was also the place where I said goodbye to others who indelibly marked my life.
I said my goodbye, flicked the lock into place out of habit, then pulled the door behind me, hearing that old familiar screech as I closed it one last time. I walked down the steps, smelling the odor of mint as I brushed past the wintergreen once more. As we turned the corner, I glanced over my shoulder for one last look – and then it was gone. The House that touched us all so much will now live only in our memories.
The House is no more – soon to be a parking lot – all in the name of progress.
—
I thought, as a fitting tribute to the House, that I’d ask everyone who ever enjoyed spending time there, as a roommate or a guest, to share their favorite memory of the House.
Mine was a barbeque one Labor Day weekend. It had rained all day, finally stopping just before sunset. The heavy rain had cooled the air, but the evaporating precipitation gave a steamy, tropical air to the gathering. The landscape torches flared, oil lamps hanging from the porch in the midst of Boston ferns glowed, white candles lining the steps and the patio shone out brightly. I had set the patio table with green wine bottles encircling a candle, each bottle holding a bright orange blossom from the vines which grew in the shrubs edging the patio.
Nothing all that remarkable happened as the evening wore into night, but that evening, filled with good food, good friends and good times, was so typical of the best the House had to offer. It was more than just a place, greater than a mere structure, so much grander than the sum of its parts. Because of the people, the wonderful, glorious people who lived, laughed and loved within its walls.
And as I sit here, listening an old Ella LP that was always my favorite record to play as the rain pattered down upon the House’s metal awnings, I can only hope that one day I can once more live within a house like the House – a true home, not just for its occupants, but to all those welcomed within its walls.
