I don’t believe in ghosts as much as I think some places have like a spectral energy to them (which, I get it, sounds worse than saying you believe in ghosts.)
But, you know, you walk into some places, and just there’s something else there.
…I’m basically “on-call” as one of a handful of odd-jobs doers for the local kingpin realtor. A job I quite happily stumbled upon when my financial straits were turning from grim to dire during the beginning of the pandemic.
I’ve done just about everything you don't want to do over the last couple of years: disposed of toilets, wrangled hornets nests, impaled myself on a bed of carpet nails, set up a weed-growing greenhouse, retrieved decaying vectors from crawl spaces, moved refrigerators, and disposed of just about anything you can dispose of this side of actual human bodies.
I’ve been cut, poked, burned, thrown the old back out, temporarily blinded and permanently bruised all for a fistful of under-the-table dollars, enough to go sit at the corner gas station and enjoy a $6 burger and Coke combo from their flat top grill and think about all the things that led me to there for a few minutes along with the rest of the patrons who happen to be on the same timeline at that particular moment.
Their stories aren’t usually great ones. They’re of people moving from their spaces, or—more accurately—being forced to move and dealing with it. Many of the homes here don’t turn over often, or when they do, it’s after a generation or two. In a sense, it’s one of the last glimpses of the middle of the 20th Century time capsule that remains in coastal California.
Last night, “Frannie” had some furniture for me to move around her soon-to-be-for-sale rancher. She moved down here from the Bay Area a decade ago, she said, to take care of her mother, who was starting to have health issues. “The last five years especially were, a lot,” she said, as I eye-banged the single-story rancher’s still-working intercom system embedded in each of its three wood-paneled bedrooms.
The bathroom countertops were gold-flecked Formica, and the kitchen cabinets were custom oak. The carpets were ivory with permanent indents from the box spring wheels with a water stain ring here and there—otherwise the home was immaculate, popcorn ceilings to linoleum.
I helped her relocate an old sectional that was probably purchased around the Summer of Love to the end of the driveway. The living room also featured a giant lacquered and brass-knobbed entertainment center-wet bar that will likely have to be taken out by helicopter.
She was preparing her forever exit of the family’s fifty-year home. There was the Christmas China stacked ungracefully on a collapsable table outside on the patio. There were piles of books thrown into plastic grocery bags and leaned up against the garage. Shelving units purchased ca. 1978-1997 pushed up against the back of the house. A Virgin Mary tapestry still hung over the stripped hospice bed that had replaced the master king mattress, which was in its repose face down in the carport.
She had me run around with a rented U-Haul dolly and move things to the curb or stage them in the living area; a pile of size-zero old lady church clothes obscured the generous hearth, which was done in gorgeous beige brick with small indigenous coastal rock accents and surrounded an oak opening for wood next to oak shelves which had mirror shelving around the corner into the kitchen.
I stopped for a moment to break after moving a buffet to the corner of the room between two giant empty parakeet cages. She was in another area of the house doing something else, and I heard laughter; it was coming from over by the bar area.
It wasn't creepy ghost titters but kind of an explosion, a guffaw, a group laugh, almost like a crash. It sent a little wave over the rest of the room toward me. I closed my eyes, and there were neighbors over there, in slacks and party dresses, gathered in a semi-circle—someone was telling a story. They were perfumed and hair done in updos.
The men jingling change in their trousers, fidgeting with their watch bands, and slicking back their hair. More drinks were poured, more laughs—holiday cheer, a roaring fire, a Mathis record on the hi-fi. The room was full; these lives were full.
And then I blinked, and Frannie was in front of me, offering me some money. “Thank you,” she said, “you don’t know how hard this has been.”
1506 Belmont Ave Baton Rouge, LA 70808
I asked her where she was going next, after the garage sale, after she sold her mother’s home. “I want to rent a vacation house down in Nashville,” she said, “and go explore the south. Tennessee, New Orleans, Louisiana, across the panhandle and down to Key West. And then, when I get tired of that, I want to go live in Paris. I want to fly away.”
And that was it. I bid her farewell and took my prize with me, an old end table that I’ll sand down and stain again and let my son stack his books and Star Wars guys on.
I felt bad taking it, but I’ll give it a good home. And I hope this little piece of the past finds utility in a seven-year-old’s room. I hope she finds her little bit of heaven; I’m sure she deserves it.
This cottage in the Hundred Oaks/City Park neighborhood is mostly dotted with turn-of-the-century shotgun houses and is a couple of rock skips to the waterfront and the garden district.
This one struck us as the place because of its screened-in porch and on-sale price tag. Yep, that's all it takes. Circa 1920 wood floors and soon-to-be-undecommissoined fireplaces are just a bonus. Oh yeah, original clawfoot tub, it's there.
There've been some shitty landlord-type updates (see: the kitchen) over the last three decades but mostly down to the shed in the back; this one has overall benefitted from neglect.
It's a block from City Park and a brisk walk to downtown or LSU. But who are we kidding? We just hope someone finds this as their spot, on the porch, watching the rest of the world do what the rest of the world does for however long it does it. Someone, in other words, who deserves it.
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