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St. Cloud State University
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Commentary
House ownership brings perils
By Eric O'Link
Published:
Thursday, September 4, 2003
Eric O´Link -- Staff Essay
You didn't see me at move-in day this year.
Well, I take that back - you might have seen me cruise through campus on my bike, taking in the chaos with the deep satisfaction of one who is on the outside looking in.
I was on campus for a while Monday, but I spent most of it holed up in my office in the frigid Stewart Hall basement.
When I biked home, I had a good laugh at the parade of cars inching their way through Atwood Mall under the Labor Day sun. Speaking of that, who came up with the idea to do the sweaty moving-into-campus thing on Labor Day?
Don't hate me for laughing, those of you who are new residents to our campus. I've paid my dues; I spent the last three years at SCSU living in the dorms. And three years - that's, let's see, 24 months of actual living in a tiny box that they call a room for two - was more than enough.
So I was quite thankful this year to have the opportunity to get off campus and into a house.
My "new" house belonged to my late grandparents. It's a gorgeous house in a nice neighborhood on the north side of St. Cloud and it's full of many happy memories, so my family has held on to it for several years now.
It was sitting empty and slightly neglected, so I saw it as the perfect opportunity to "get out of the house" and yet still not have to live on campus.
I've been there for almost three weeks now and it has been fantastic. I enjoy doing the dishes, keeping the house clean and moving sprinklers around the yard.
But I've also learned about some of the perils of homeownership.
This house, you see, dear as it is, is about 50-years-old. True to the form of old houses everywhere, funny things happen there almost like clockwork.
The first week was uneventful enough. I racked up a huge grocery bill to stock the pantry and spent a lot of time peeking into cupboards to figure out the locations of various important household items. I replaced a lot of light bulbs and puzzled over why the dishwasher's soap dispenser door had a proclivity toward not opening.
Did I mention this house has two kitchens? My grandfather's hobby was cooking, so to supplement that, he built an addition on to the house that is essentially a huge kitchen.
So when I want a pan, a large salad bowl or some other random piece of kitchenware, it becomes a scavenger hunt of sorts - which drawer will hold what I'm looking for? Sometimes this can be a 10-minute endeavor.
But here's what takes the cake; my friend and roommate Bob had moved in only the day before when we noticed a dreadful odor emanating from the basement bathroom. It was a rotting-dead-thing sort of stench that was so bad you could barely breathe. Turns out a mouse chewed through the wooden window frame and got stuck between the bathroom window and screen. It died and consequently started to stink.
After some dreadful excitement about the mouse, we managed to remove it and all was quiet on the western front.
Then the next day, it poured cats and dogs (but at least not mice) and the basement window well started filling up with water - yes, the same window that had the dead mouse. Soon it was seeping into the bathroom under the baseboard and then pouring in alarmingly fast around the window.
I ran upstairs for some towels. I came back to a flood of Biblical proportions. I half expected to see Noah and his ark go sailing past the shuffleboard floor tiles.
It took almost three hours to clean up the mess; we pumped 15 gallons of water off the floor. I think I've fixed the problem - a plugged gutter. Once again, all has returned to normal.
Of course, it's only a matter of time before the next mini-disaster.
But those disasters are satisfying. After all, I didn't have to sit in traffic for hours on move-in day.
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