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October 7, 2007
houses on the hill
a couple of weeks ago - i think it was a friday - i was returning to 4808 after a grueling day on "the job" and by grueling what i mean to say is that it was after 1 p.m. when i wrapped up my last appointment. as i pulled up 49th street i saw a strange car in my driveway and suddenly remembered that my room mate had some family in town and they were going to be dropping some things off at the house. well i'm not ashamed to say that i was not feeling sociable on this particular friday and so i decided to go for a drive.
i pulled up to the stop sign on st. elmo avenue and instead of making the traditional right turn toward the kincadian comforts of downtown chattanooga i pushed my blinker down and turned left pointing the car toward the mysterious land known as "georgia". st. elmo ave doubles as a state highway meaning it is often heavily trafficked thus making front porch socializing at 4808 difficult and as it ambles it also meanders on on and on past fields and farms and dells and herds of sheep. okay the sheep i made up but there were some folks who had some goats milling about their yard. and in my book goats are practically the same thing as sheep.
but i don't want to get into a big thing about the sheep...because i wanted to talk about this amazing house that i stumbled upon. i was driving up a back road occupied by warehouses and body shops and as the road bent back toward the highway a field opened up to my right revealing an endless sea of junked and burned out cars and on the right the terrain swept up until it joined lookout mountain. and there on the hillside at the end of a winding driveway was this magnificent house - or rather a formerly magnificent house. in its current condition the place is pretty run down. the kind of house that elementary school children tell ghost stories about even as they try to work up the courage to ring the doorbell.
i actually drove by the house several more times looking at it from different angles - trying to fathom what it must have looked like in the glorious days of its youth. in its current state it's more like something out of a flannery o'connor story - you can almost see the dirty faced children with their blank eyes starting out at you through the disintegrating screen door. but wow! you could certainly throw a kick ass party on that wrap around porch. that's the thing i love about the south - there are houses like this one all over the place just waiting to be discovered.
perhaps 10 years from now when the gentrification of st. elmo is complete and my street becomes a quaint little cookie cutter antique neighborhood someone will come along brush away and the cobwebs and bring it back to its former beauty. of course by that time i'll be long gone...sipping cervezas on the black sandy beaches of costa rica listening to my copy of spanish pick up lines on tape as i sway in the perfect seasonless breeze.
| By young_christopher | 5:01 PM
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Comments
Posted by: Nick at October 9, 2007 6:46 PM
Posted by: heidi at October 10, 2007 11:02 AM