Ensley Alabama, moving in

Having been a resident of Birmingham suburbs for 24 years, I’ve lived in Hoover, Helena, Vestavia, and most recently Ensley.  One of these places is not like the others. 

Shortly before the economic collapse of 2008, the company where I work wisely cut the workforce by 100+ people (out of 400+) and cut the remaining employee’s pay by 10 percent.  Luckily I was not one of the 100+, but I was living in an apartment in Hoover at the time and found that I could no longer afford the high rent.  It was time for a change.

I decided to do a field study in the basics of civilization as we know it.  I found a three story brick house in Ensley for sale that came with three lots and the price was only 9 thousand dollars.  It has hard-wood floors and is built into a hill so every floor has a ground level door.  I couldn’t imagine why it had been on the market for 3 years; except that it was a foreclosure and the bank originally wanted eighty-five thousand and lowered the asking price by a few thousand every few months.  By the time I went through the process of getting moved in, it had sat vacant for several years; the local kids broke about a third of the windows.

“D” and “P” (teenagers) used to walk a path nearby on the way to the school bus and had an ongoing one rock per day challenge – i.e. one would throw a rock at my house and the other would throw a rock and my neighbor’s.  The winner would be the one that broke a window.  Luckily the younger brother threw at my house and wasn’t as strong as the older one; my neighbor’s house had most of the windows completely broken.  (It’s still vacant).

The copper thieves had cut out all the plumbing they could access, and there was evidence that someone had been sleeping in the basement.  Scavenging the neighborhood for vacant houses containing copper seems to be a relatively popular cult here.  I once threw away an old couch and within an hour someone was out there with a beat up pickup truck and an axe ripping it apart for scrap metal.

The house’s foundation seems to be cracked and the roof leaks badly when it rains hard.  I packed the apartment, bought locks for the door duct-taped a few of the windows and moved in.  Thus I had reached civilization level 1 – shelter.

The first week was brutally cold; my thermometer read 34 degrees inside.  I wore 6 layers of clothing and then slept under 4 blankets on top of that the first few days.

After a few days investigation (in limited daylight after work), I determined that most of the wiring was still intact, although 50+ years old.  I contacted the power company and had them install power meter and turn on the power.  It turns out the drainage plumbing wasn’t valuable enough to steal, so I brought buckets of water from work so I could flush the toilet.   So, civilization level 2 - the ability to stay up past dark, watch DVD movies, and be warm without being uncomfortable (via an electric blanket).

Next post will be “The welcoming party in the hood”; an unplanned event one morning from 12:30 to 2:30 AM.