Flip This Crack House?

Something is going on with one of my next door neighbors, whom I’ll refer to as Sir Smokes A-Lot. I call him Sir Smokes A-Lot because he has had a crack problem since well…the dawn of crack. This is according to another neighbor who told me that Sir Smokes A-Lot has “been chasin’ that white ghost ever since I don’t know when.” Several Saturdays ago, there was a lot of banging going on in SSAL’s house, which was strange because the guy hardly ever makes a sound. We didn’t hear any screaming during or after the banging, so we figured all the noise was legit.

The next morning I was sitting in the upstairs office/back bedroom, hoping to finally reach the end of the internet, when all of the sudden there was SSAL standing on the roof of his back porch just six feet away from my window. He scared the sweet bejesus out of me! He had a cigarette dangling from his lips and appeared to be pulling the end of a dresser out of one of his windows. He was grumbling instructions to push and I heard the all too familiar screech of one of our friendly neighborhood hookers from inside of the house, “I am fuckin’ pushin’!! This fuckin’ shit is heavier ‘n fuckin’ hell!”

Almost as soon as she said that, one of SSAL’s feet broke completely through the dry-rotted particle board roof and he dropped his end of the dresser on his way down. What followed can only be described as a sonnet of cuss words that would have made even Shakespeare jealous – it was that beautiful. I believe he even ended the thing with a rhyming couplet:

“Help me pick up this muthafuckin’ this shit
Or else you gon’ get muthafuckin’ hit.”

Probably the most beautiful thing about this Sunday morning moment was that SSAL didn’t even break the ash on his cigarette.

Over the course of the next several days, the banging continued deep in the bowels of SSAL’s house and more furniture piled up in his back yard. An unfortunate side effect of my neighbor’s “renovations”, besides having to look at the dilapidated and oddly stained furniture, was the mass exodus of cockroaches from his kitchen to mine. This is row home city living, after all. Cockroaches happen…especially when neighbors declare jihad on their houses. I panicked and called my bear exterminator, who came over the next day. I haven’t seen a bug in the kitchen since.

Later that same week, SSAL had some random guys in a pickup truck back down the alley and take all of the furniture to parts unknown. The city dump? craigslist? Sergeant Street? It didn’t really matter to me. The shit was finally gone and that’s all I cared about. The banging stopped, the bugs went away, the crack house had been flipped. Or so we thought.

A couple of weeks ago, I opened the back door early one morning to let the dogs out and there, in SSAL’s back yard, was a plastic mangled heap of a jungle gym complete with faded dueling sliding boards. This was a stunning sight because SSAL does not have any kids and there was nothing in the yard at 11 p.m. the night before. Had the Mildewed Tired Ass Jungle Gym fairy visited while we were sleeping? I didn’t remember putting a scratch off ticket under my pillow. I was so shocked when I first saw the thing in SSAL’s yard that I made Lady Friend come look at it before she even had any coffee. I asked her, “Is SSAL getting ready to open a daycare center?”

And so the busted jungle gym still sits on it’s side in my neighbor’s back yard. The weeds are starting to grow around it and through the cracks. I’m terrified of seeing baby ratlings sliding down the sliding board and pushing each other on the swing. It’s only a matter of time. At night I can see the weeds moving in SSAL’s yard as the rodent delinquents make there way over to the the jungle gym. If this were an episode of Extreme Crack Home Makeover, I’d feel stirrings of (I think they’re called) emotions and there’s a good chance I’d be (I think they call it) crying. But since this is Flip My Crack House, I’m reminded that I must pick up more bait cakes and snap traps on my way home tomorrow. Sir Smokes A-Lot’s Pigtown Montessori School will have to wait.