A Story Within A Chapter ... Part Three

And so we begin

Have you ever heard the saying You see only What you want to see? Well guess what my friends It seems That this very thing Happened to me. I wanted my family back together. I saw only what my heart Wanted my eyes to see. I promise I will not draw this out forever As we now move into What remains to be seen. A little bit of advice From a friend . . . . NEVER give away your money If there is the slightest doubt. In the cold hard light of morning You may find . . . Your dream turned inside out! A Story . . . . Within A Chapter Part Three I met the owner of 'The Barn' Just as he had requested At the neighborhood Diner In the town of Prescott Arizona That very cold December morning I could hardly wait For Hersh to make his usual call To tell him that I rented A place for us to live I signed the lease ... Got the keys And left after a cup of coffee With a song in my heart I headed out to have The utilities turned on with The last few dolars We had left to our name Address please . . . . Why the strange look I wondered? Mrs. Gay You do know that this address Is notorious For high utility bills There has been no one live In this house For over three years Please tell me This is just an inquirey And you have not already Rented this place The song in my heart Suddenly disappeared As I got enough nerve to ask her Why the utilities were so high And how high ... High was The only heat in the place Is the electric heaters That runs along the bottom Of the logs You didn't notice them When you looked at the place They are very expensive to run In answer to your question On average in the Winter It will cost you About seven hundred dollars A month to even keep from Seeing your breath In the place There hasn't been a family That has lived out The Winter there In about ten years now It is easier to eat the lease Than pay the electric I have to charge you A higher deposit than we normally do To turn on the gas and electricity Because people are always skipping Out on us because They cannot pay their bills I am so sorry! Of course I had not noticed! I was the idiot that rented a place Before looking at it a second time In the light of day   No wonder the owner had wanted To meet me in town rather Than meeting me at the house He had to have known That if I saw it a second time I would have second thoughts Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Well that was it Our money was all gone We had to have utilities And the lease was already signed Dear Lord What do I do now? I drove first to my Mother's house After stopping in at the Barn Only to find that I must have passed Her on the highway going into town I took one look at Ivan And burst into tears After collecting myself Enough to tell him what had happened He was ready to go find his gun And hunt down the landlord That he was sure had taken advantage of me C'mon sweetie It will all be Okay I promise Lets go take a look At this place you have rented I have always wanted to see The inside of that old place It was NOT Okay! The place was filthy And when I tell you filthy ... I mean FILTHY It also seemed to be falling In around itself The upstairs that I Had not seen at all was filled With every kind of trash imaginable The room that I was thinking Could become Hersh's office Had jagged concrete poking itself Out of what was supposed to be carpeting Oh yes ... The critters!! Remember the windows? Well the little lizzards loved them There seemed to be one In each window box sunning themselves And I would eventually realize That they had no intentions of Vacating the premises Broken windows Drafts from logs that no longer Had any insulation because our friendly mice Used them as a stomping ground and a chew toy Dear Lord... Dear Lord...... What have I done I wonder if Kenneth Will stand between myself and his Father When he first sees this place The call That I had been so looking forward to Now became my fear Of having to come clean with Hersh About the mess I had gotten us into How was I going to be able To give him this kind of news On top of everything We had already faced And thought We could now put behind us To be continued . . . .

Author's Note

Remeber when life seems it can get no worse .... You will either find that it can .... Or you will find that you might have some great things waiting ahead of you. I hope you will continue with us
to find our lessons learned.

Reviews

[Kim Gay]

The barn was a big house. The ceiling in the living room were valted. When you walked into the living room it looked like the old barns in Iowa. High ceilings with a hay loft. That is why we called it the barn. The big picture windows take up most of one wall. It did indeed only have the wall heaters. The wall heaters were so old they were a fire Hazzard. Now when the house was built it had radiant heat. There was a big boiler room next to the car port that looked like a Crematoriumcrematorium. It was falling down by the time we lived there. I guess they burned wood or maybe cole to heat the water that ran under the floors at one time. So the boiler and the log fireplace was the original way of heatting for the barn. That is why the floors were lumpy when the house settled. All the clay pipe's had broke under the floor. The wall heaters were very old in that house so the power bill was very high. There was no way could afford to run them at all time or at all really. My Dad did talk to the land lord and that' is when he agreed to redo the roof and floor. Then the landlord dropped to rent to 350. So it didn't cost so much. Even with that we could not run the wall heaters on just my Mom's income.

The landlord did everything to keep us renting that place. I mean think on that for a min. How may landlords would do such a things? That large of a house for that low of rent? I will personally tell you it was not just the high utilities that keep people from living there for 3 years and I know why no one made it through the winter was also not just the high utilities. I will tell about that later in my Mom's story.

Please understandthat I was a city girl all the way up to that point my life. I was from southern california where cities just blended into other cities. Yes I had horses growing up. We also had small orchard of citrus trees ect but we were only 15 mins from a mall or any thing you wanted to do. Our houses got bigger and bigger as my dad built the bussiness up.

I know my mom hated the critters that lived with us in the barn but on rainy days I had alot of fun trying to catch the lizards in those windows. Many a tail was lost. You could always tell witch lizards had been in the house windows. When they were outside because they were the one's growing there tails back. So they were the lizard with just a tail numbs. I still don't know how they made there way in and out of the house. This was proof they did though.

I am getting a head of my self though because at this point in the story. I had not seen the house myself yet. I do remember my mom going from over joyed to crying and worrying about what my Dad was going to think. I felt so bad for her. I was still happy I would have my own room again and it could not be as bad as she was saying when she was a so happy the evening she looked at it the frist time right.......

My Mom and Dad were very traditional. My mom never made those kinds of decisions on her own before. Her best friend rented the frist place she lived in on her own after here frist marriage. My dad made sure she never signed a lease on her own after that too. lol.

[Rain]

Man,
Does this ever sound like life unfolding. lol. I laugh, but I know it wasn't funny then. But, like they say, " A good story is better than a good time."
Just a fascinating piece of life. Rain..