Performer: The Jimi Hendrix Experience
Songwriter: Jimi Hendrix
Original Release: Axis: Bold As Love
Year: 1967
Definitive Version: None
After Debbie and I got
engaged, the search for a house began in earnest. The latter part of that
statement is necessary, because the search began after we’d lived in our
Gahanna apartment for a year. After a year, our lease was month-to-month, so we
could leave at any moment with 30 days’ notice.
However, before our
engagement early New Year’s 1997, the search primarily consisted of looking
through newspaper classifieds to see whether there was anything that we just
couldn’t pass up. There never was.
Well, I shouldn’t quite say
that, I suppose. We took a quick look at a couple houses in German Village, but
they only made us realize that we couldn’t afford what we really wanted in
German Village, as I noted.
We found one neighborhood
that seemed more approachable. It was between Gahanna and Westerville, and we
found it while out looking at Christmas lights. The houses were decent size but
seemed modest. It was like the neighborhood in which I grew up, except it
wasn’t in Upper Arlington, so the houses probably had about $100K knocked off
the price.
A few of the houses in that
neighborhood, usually corner-lot houses, particularly appealed to me. They
looked like spruced up farmhouses, with huge wrap-around porches that would be
ideal for a swing and evening hanging out. I was curious to see what one of
those looked like on the inside.
The drawback to the
neighborhood was it was so new the trees primarily were newly planted twigs.
Debbie’s apartment when we began to date had a little woods in the back, and
she loved having that and being able to see birds. She wanted a real
backyard—with trees. In driving around, we found a farmhouse that was at the
middle of a courtyard that backed into a ravine that had a huge woods. If THAT
house ever went on sale …
After we got engaged,
however, we got serious about looking. Buying a house was a bit intimidating;
it wasn’t like buying a stereo or even a car. I certainly had never done it
before. Debbie had, and she didn’t want to operate alone. One of her nieces had
a friend who was a real-estate agent. Debbie met with her, liked her and hired
her.
After a couple weeks, in
March 1997, she brought us a few possibles. We culled the list to four where
the price seemed right ($150K-$180K). The agent scheduled us to look at three
on a Saturday and one on Sunday.
The first house we looked at
on a sunny early-spring March day was a farmhouse in the neighborhood that we
had had our eyes on. It wasn’t THE house, alas. Instead, it was the least
desirable of the farmhouses based on the lot and location, but I finally got my
inside view. It wasn’t impressive. The square footage was about 1,800, but it
seemed smaller than that. The thing I remember most were smoke detectors high
up on the walls—they looked like old elementary school bells. They were huge
and ugly.
That wasn’t the only thing
that dissuaded me, however. The neighborhood had huge power lines streaking
over it, and I knew that that was bad. After my great-grandfather on Mom’s side
died, my great-grandmother moved into a condo building that was adjacent to an
electric transformer, and I’m convinced that the dementia that formed soon
afterward was a direct result. I also since had seen a study that found that
close proximity to power lines led to a much higher cancer rate. OK, moving right
along …
The next house was in
Gahanna. I was geeked about that house, too, because it had a pool, and I’d
always wanted a pool. (And, yes, I knew that they cost a lot of money to
maintain.) The pool area was done in wood decking and pretty cool, but the
house itself was a classic. I called it the Elvis House after one look at the
master bedroom, which had thick white shag carpeting and black tiled walls.
Holy schlamoley! What year is this? 1974? OK, the bedroom can be redone, but
Debbie didn’t want to bother. Next.
The last place was a
nondescript house on a cul-de-sac. The things I remember about it were the
second-story deck and the huge sloping backyard that didn’t have a single tree
in it. Nuff said. I was starting to get the idea that the houses in our price
range were mostly like this: You paid extra for trees.
The next day, we found out
before we left that our agent couldn’t make that appointment, so we went alone.
It was a fine house in Gahanna—simple—and Debbie noted with some surprise that the
selling agent was a name she recognized from her youth. “HE’s still selling
houses,” she asked rhetorically. Sure enough, it was the same guy.
The house itself was
unmemorable—nice, but boring, and at the upper limit of our price range.
However, at one point as we walked around the second floor, the agent offered
that the couple who were selling were divorcing, so they probably would move
quite a bit on the price. Well, he couldn’t have said a worse thing unless he
said that the house was the site of a quintuple murder.
Debbie didn’t storm out, but
we wrapped up our visit fairly quickly after that, and she told me when we got
in the car that when he said that, that queered the deal as far as she was
concerned. She didn’t like the idea that he would dispense with that
information so willingly. It was real slimy, she said. I didn’t disagree, but I
wouldn’t have cared as long the house drew me in. It didn’t.
So it was back to the
drawing board. No problem. We didn’t think we’d land anything our first time
out; we were only just getting started.
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