House Hunting Stories

[Flick James]

I got another one...

When my wife and I were house hunting we visited a log cabin in a lake community called "Shady Lake." Sounds peaceful doesn't it? We quickly learned that "Lake Community" is basically fancy realtor talk for "Trailer Park Without Wheels."

This place had been built in the 1950s as a development of summer cottages and cabins but over the years most of them were converted to full time year round homes....except, apparently, the one we looked at!! We had wondered why the price was so cheap when we saw the listing, till we got a look at the place. It would've cost a fortune to put up enough sheetrock walls and insulate it so that it would've been livable in the winter time.

...and as an added bonus, everywhere we went inside this house we were tripping over these little tin cans that were placed all over the floor. After we knocked over the fifth or sixth one my father in law sez "What the hell ARE these things, anyway?" and picked one up -- it was a can of "flea bomb" room fogger insecticide, and these things were in EVERY ROOM. We beat it the hell outta there and yeah, it was probably our imaginations but all of us felt itchy for the rest of the day...

That's funny. It reminds me of a phenomenon we had in my native Southern California. Imagine you're from the midwest and moving to the Los Angeles area, and you are looking at apartments or houses, and you run into a little suburb called Hawaiian Gardens. Hawaiian Gardens. That sounds nice, doesn't it? You're probably already starting to picture palm trees and umbrella drinks before I'm finished typing this sentence, right?

Hawaiian Gardens is a gang-infested pit.

[Trevor]

and yeah, it was probably our imaginations but all of us felt itchy for the rest of the day...

I don't see why you're complaining: I feel like that 24/7. 

[Trevor]

Sorry Trev!  Not that an additional twenty years would have affected that goose much in its state...but we didn't save you any!     Tell you what: you come visit and we'll cook you a fresh one...sans worms.   

Sounds good to me. 

[Raffine]

We looked at several houses here that the inspectors refused to even go in because the plumbing and electrical systems were so old and outdated. On top of that the houses are very old and wooden, and in many neighborhoods there are two and three stories homes almost on top of each each other. The words 'FIRE TRAP' kept coming to mind.