Of slum lords, infernal beepings, and flower transplants

I had yet another creepy-old-guy encounter today. And no, not with Ronnie. I guess first I should give you some background. Here in Waycross there are two people whom my mother and I consider to be Slum Lords. They own a lot of properties that are in terrible condition. Now, if you're planning to run a rental property, it has to be up to certain codes. If you're planning to sell a house, it doesn't. These two chaps offer people (generally very poor people) the opportunity to rent-to-own these houses. It seems that the general expectation is that eventually these people will miss a payment and get evicted, and they can turn around and set up a rent-to-own scenario with someone else. And getting the properties up to code? Hey, that's the responsibility of the new "owner."

One of these slum lords is (outwardly at least) a fine upstanding pillar of the community, who lives in a big house in one of the nice neighborhoods. (He owns the houses located next to and behind me.) The other... well, I don't know where he lives, but people who've had dealings with him tend to consider him a dirty old man. When my mom was first looking for a place to either buy or rent when she first got a job up here, he made her a skeezy offer of the wink-wink-nudge-nudge variety. Apparently this slum lord owns a property on my street from which the residents have just been evicted. He and some people were there today cleaning out the crap that had been left behind, and he decided to come over and introduce himself.

Now, Ronnie might be somewhat crazy with a tendency to get naked at inappropriate times, but he never came across as creepy or threatening - at least not when he was fully clothed anyway. This guy, despite being a grandfatherly looking (80ish?) old southern boy in a shiny new pickup simply exuded creepiness. He didn't say or do anything inappropriate (other than being somewhat of a close talker), but nonetheless I immediately suspected that he was the dirty-old-man-slum-lord whom my mom had told me about. (This was later confirmed.) He wanted to know if my mom and I owned that house over on... well, let's just say over on that street where mom and I own another house. He said he'd heard a school teacher had bought it. According to my mom, he'd been interested in buying it, but the people who'd sold it to her hadn't wanted to sell to the dirty old man.

Changing topics... three nights ago I was awakened from a deep sleep (and that's pretty hard to do) by an incessant beeping. Beep, beep, beep, pause, beep, beep, beep, pause... etc. It was the repetitive nature of the sound that disturbed my slumber. It sounded like a fire alarm with a low battery. I waited for the owner of said alarm to change or remove the battery. No such luck. The incessant beeping wouldn't stop, and it was right at a frequency guaranteed to give me a headache. This afternoon I realized that it was coming from inside one of the empty houses across the street. While my mom and the neighbors looked on I entered the house (there was no breaking; the front window was already shattered - I simply stuck my arm through the jagged hole and undid the lock), took down the fire alarm (well, mom did that, as she's taller) and ripped out the battery. No more beeping. Thank the gods.

And lastly, mom and I dug up and transplanted some fall daisies, goldenrod and foamflowers into my yard this afternoon. We also planted a crepe myrtle which had been sitting out back in a pot for ages. Planting the crepe myrtle we ran into a bit of trouble. See, my house (build in the late 40s or early 50s) was built on top of the foundations of an older house which had burned down. Apparently the foundations from the old house stretch out under my back lawn. Nothing like trying to dig out bricks coated in concrete with a shovel... Assuming the plants take (fingers crossed!) I'll get some pictures for you. They're all looking a little wilty right now though.