Epic Debris, Not A Narrative Poem
Two days ago in the rain I told the guys who were hauling off the last of 14 years worth of renter's garbage that if it was burnable they could just leave it, and that's what they did. The result being that when they drove off there was still a sizable ugly pile in the yard. It was anti-climatic, this ending to the story of epic debris.
I couldn't stand looking at it so yesterday I went out and started another fire, despite the gusting 25 mph wind and the thick carpet of leaves leading right up to the burn pile. The ground was still wet from three days of light rain. I had some dry wood set aside and I used it to get a good blaze going. Then I fed into the fire all manner of thrown away renter's crap, some of which I had actually excavated from shallow graves on the property. There is always a bit of archaeology involved with thorough clean up jobs and what I learned digging around the property is that my old buddy Randy is a damn pig, or at least he was while living here.
And I guess I am a pig-loving slacker for letting it go on as long as I did.
While I was renovating properties in New Orleans, for fun and profit and with varying degrees of success, and caretaking a property in Virginia, Randy and his wife were here in North Carolina, buying and discarding, buying and discarding. But most of the discard never left the property. I had suspected over all those years of missing so many rent payments that they were having employment problems but I learned a few months ago, in my two brief meetings with them, that they have both been consistently employed for at least the last eight years. I suppose after 14 years of negligence these months of part time renovating are not so harsh a punishment. And perhaps even a valuable learning experience. If the husband says but we are paying rent and the wife says please don't tell hubby I'm missing rent because he beats me, realize at the very least that your idea of acting as your own property manager was a bad one.
As slow as it's going out here in NC at least now the 7 cars are gone, and the two boats (one of them was full of empty beer cans) and the swing set, the three TVs, 5 transistor radios, 2 vacuum cleaners, 21 tires, 100 paint buckets, 2000 cans and 400 bottles, 2 life rafts, the rotted drop cloths, the faded and cracked assortment of fisher price toys, two chicken coops, one sprawling dog pen, various piles of rotting wood, the outdated and stained couches and chairs and foam cushions for twice as many more, the refrigerator/freezer, the broken arc welder, the piles of aluminum gutter, and spare drive shafts, alternators, starters, and rolls of reupholstering fabric, mini-blinds, bed frames, chicken wire, 25 wooden pallets, 3 truck toolboxes, 2 riding lawn mowers, 1 weedeater, 3 lawn mower bags, 1 turbine fan, and the minutiae spread about everywhere, in the basement and in the house and all over the 2 plus acres were bottle caps and spent shotgun shells and scraps of paper and plastic and tiny toys, and rusted and rotting lawn furniture and ice trays, both plastic and old school aluminum half buried out in the woods along with tangled coils of insulated copper wire and metal roofing and more sad neglected toys and rolls of carpet and sheets of vinyl flooring, a dozen dry rotted fishing poles, a camper shell, and a truck bed used for burning garbage. Have I left anything out? Oh for sure, but you get the idea.
I got a good deal on having a 45 foot sprawling maple tree cut down in the front yard, the roots of which are choking the septic system. For 200 dollars a guy dropped it and then my neighbor took most of the wood. I dragged off the branches and made a pile and cut into logs another small truck bed's worth of wood. I burned three quarters of the brush pile yesterday after burning the last of the garbage and before developing minor back cramps. The guy that dropped the tree for me left a rather large stump, one about eight feet tall. Randy had put so many nails in the bottom of the trunk, as part of his property-wide dog hot-wire system, that the guy had not wanted to ruin a good chain on it, and I don't blame him that.
It was warm yesterday and I had the bedroom window open so the cat could come and go. She used to come and go through the floor vent of the still disconnected heating system but she has put on some winter weight and doesn't seem to fit as well. A bunch of flies came in through the window, whether born of maggots from excrement or those squirming in the offal of a nearby butchered deer, I don't know. But a good many came in yesterday and I was amused when the cat would leap in the air and catch one and then eat it. She tired of that though and today she hasn't done a damn thing and really, neither have I, except for trying to finish the Russo novel that's been following me around for a month and later working up the nerve to listen to the Saints just barely beat a one and eight team. But a minute ago I put her outside and closed the window because I don't like to see anyone as lazy as I am when I am intent on being as lazy as I am. When I was feeling more fond of the cat, like yesterday when she was being cute killing flies, I had entertained the notion that I might find for her a little King Kong costume and also that I might make a paper mache Empire State Building for her cling to while she swatted flies. But now, to me anyway, that idea seems patently absurd.
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