The month of March 22012 saw me facing four female tenants who would not pay their rent which lead to their leaving or being evicted. The first Horsewoman abandoned the property without paying the months rent or the water bills. She left the house with doors off of the hinges, holes in the plaster walls and garbage and trash everywhere. Months of neglect. We tried to keep her as a tenant for over 6 months the whole time threatening and negotiating with TRA. But in the end money talked and the BS walked. In the case it flew. My lifelong friend Randy once told me after his second wife left him that women dont run they flee Randy came home from school one evening while studying for his doctorate in psychology in LA. He had been married for a year or so. He walked into his home and he said everything...furniture, his very expensive hardbound collection of the Carl Jung books, pets, pots and pans....All Gone! There was a small table with an even smaller lamp with an even smaller wattage light bulb, with an even smaller note telling him (in essence) that I dont love you anymore. Turns out that she moved in with a man who believed he was a guru. I heard the house looked like the Taj Mahal inside. The Greeks have a word Katabasis, or catabasis, (from Greek ????, down ????? go) is a descent of some type, such as moving downhill, or the sinking of the winds or sun, a military retreat, or a trip to the underworld or a trip from the interior of a country down to the coast. There exist multiple related meanings in poetry, rhetoric, and modern psychology. I flew out to LA a few days latter to do damage control for my friend. The second Horsewoman just refused to pay for the last 3 or 4 months under the premise that she had a new job which was about to begin. She even walked down to my office and showed me documents from the unemployment office that her employer was behind in sending her her back payments, which amounted to 4 or 5 thousand dollars. She said to me, with a completely straight face, I want to show you that I am no liar (insert thief) and the money is coming I dont want to be evicted!. I should add that this horsewoman had been evicted and thrown out on the street by her previous landlord the day I met her. Seeing her plight, I felt sorry for her and her children and I rented her a vacancy with no security anyway, and this is after being told by her landlord that she made very good money as a professional and just simply refused to pay her rent for months without a valid reason. He further admonished me to not give her a house and that I would be in court one day. Well, this horsewoman was served her papers, five months later and moved out the day I won the eviction. On that day, she made public threats to me and my wife and to other people on the block..... As my friend Pokey, RIP, would say, See ya, wouldnt want to be ya. I will admit here and now that I never wanted to be a landlord. I enjoy doing the work of repairing and making things right. There is a challenging amount of creativity in maintenance of the three dimensional world. I am a mechanic first and foremost. I become creatively excited by the idea of making some-thing that is needed. As a 8 or 9 year old kid I learned to take things apart to see what and how it was made, how to put it back together...bicycles, refrigerators, skates, clocks, springs and things...you name it! My fathers world and basement was filled with electrical and mechanical tools, machines and electrical equipment. I would explore a magical and wondrous world of three dimensions rather than books...books came later. One of the first things I designed, in the mid fifties, was a pair of brass knuckles. They were very sophisticated and deadly. The older kids in what now would be called the hood, wanted them for the seasonal routine invasion of gang members from the surrounding towns of Gloucester or Camden. They would come in the high heat of the summer...motorcycles, baseball bats and fiery fists. It was all very Marlon Brando-ish... like the scenes from the movie The Wild One. These are the early years of being faced with fight or flight, mommy or daddy, kill or be killed...very scarey and exciting at the same time. I wish I had those brass knuckles now! Horsewoman #3 had the ability to lure men into her world of plight and sorrow and help me like the Sirens on a Greek rock. Men would just sail right in. This young lady had a basket of male eggs available to her for a number of years. She could burn men at both ends of the candle. Need a ride...no problem. Need some money...no problem. Need baby...yea. Need protection...got that to, sometimes! Well we all wake up eventually right. The sheriff will be out to do a removal by the end of the month. Fourth Horsewomen was more or less a case of the tenant not qualifying for the routine requirements that welfare stipulates in order for welfare to pay rent to the landlord. Again this was a situation where we spent over a year trying to work with a broken and corrupt system, the TRA, inept case workers and resistance to help women in need of help. Amy and I spent hours writing and speaking with legal aide lawyers, welfare case workers. We assisted in the tenant switching case workers to get better communication with the office. I even got a cell phone for the tenant so we could communicate efficiently. This women had been a mother of 5 going o 6 children. Regardless of what judgements people can conclude about a women who ends up with kind of chapter in her life, the whys, whatfors and WTF, this was a tough one for me. Unfortunately it came down to the money, a broken down arm of the system, an out of choices for a tenant/mother and us needing to pay our bills. There is a much used term I have incorporated into my language. It is What it Is. I really despise how the implications of this phrase compromises ones personal power, ones dreams, ones choices. It can be changed. Live long and prosper. Mr. John
Posted on: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 16:46:38 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015