I was concerned about buying a new house because it's not my aesthetic. I don't hate all new architecture, but I'm definitely not a fan of anything I can afford. I rued this situation for months, literally troubled by the thought of living in a tidy modern house. Nobody understands. "Oh, you're mad that it's not...old and shitty?" unsympathetic friends ask. Yes, bro. Jesus christ.
I joked that this "setback" would inevitably result in my overcompensating by moving to Providence to live in a 250 year old house in a few years. If Abigail Adams wasn't alive when it was built, then I don't want it! ...is what I'd tell my local realtor, who would then roll their eyes and mentally note this for their real estate tik tok about asshole clients.
Surprisingly, I am amused by my new hood after all, because it reminds me of the suburban neighborhood from Edward Scissorhands. Pathologically uniform, tidy and simple, with houses only distinguished from each other by colors or subtle variations in size. The house colors here are kind of jazzy, as they are in the movie, and you can see six other neighbors' yards from over the fence from your own. Starter house, as I still expect to die in a mouldering Queen Anne.
It also made me think of the neighborhood from Poltergeist, and I thought it was funny that this freshly scrubbed, manufactured bit of new Americana just reminded me of horror movies. I hope I won't need Tangina. I'm getting the impression that this association is not usual or expected when I share it, but this is one place where I have experience: If you didn't grow up in a psychotically-landscaped new build community, then you won't get it.
I have 1980s photos of my parents standing on the vast concrete foundation that eventually became our house in north Phoenix. When I look at later photos, inevitably taken during family parties, I can't believe how perfectly manicured and deep green our lawn is, or how tidy the house in its peach color scheme. How tall the piles of birthday presents, how round the grandmas' bouffants.
The parallels between this house and our old new house of the 80s are something I hadn't realized before. Having grown up in new construction is why I dislike it, and why I can feel comfortable in it. I remember the feeling of living in a place where no one had lived before, of being the first to make the door dent in the wall, the first to make a mess, a permanent stain. The first to infuse their petty human foibles and thoughts into the air, even though I was too young to appreciate a place with no "vibes" until we had created plenty of our own. After an adulthood of living in the mustiest, oldest, least updated places I could find, filled with weird traces of peoples' lives, I had forgotten about that.
Anyway, this little Cuesta Verde is in an area that's still half country, and driving around, I see old farmhouses partially shrouded in stands of trees, led to by dirt roads with tall grass between the tracks. These were once the most remote homes in the county, unimaginably isolated even 5 years ago, and now they're slowly becoming surrounded on all sides. I'm sad for it, sad to see wide open slopes of native grass as far as the eye can see and know they're going to turn into stupid houses, everyone building and then frantically buying to fill the rooms. I'm surrounded by wild empty land on three sides and I love it. It's that strange, hybrid hill country, dry and yellow in some areas and tangled and green with big, ancient oaks in others, viney thickets where the creeks are, full of fish and screaming birds.
There are no birds in my fake neighborhood, because all the trees are short and spindly and held up by stakes. I put my feeders up and looked at the horizon, squinting quizzically under my shielding hand, where are those dang bluejays anyway? They're raising hell all over central Austin right now but there's not one here. Also: not a squirrel. Unbelievable.
The dirt roads and rolling grass around here make it feel like no surprise that this particular swath of east-of-35 was once cut through by the Chisholm Trail, one of the big cattle trails of the late 19th century, that stretched from the Rio Grande to Kansas City. Naturally, local podcasts say (ok the ghost podcast says) the trail is haunted by native and settler ghosts. Guys out walking around looking like humans and then disappearing, the sound of invisible hooves, and other fodder from the elementary school book fair.
It's haunting, at least, to think that all this land stayed raw up until right about now. There's a place not far away that's been converted to a living history community, full of 500 year old legacy oaks, old green trails first tramped by native feet and a pristine creek where those same bluejays like to wing around like crazy, because this preserve, continually occupied by different people for hundreds of years, is now in the middle of a neighborhood. Some of the city's earliest cabins have been moved there to create a walking tour. House after empty house, staged for the 1840s, 60s, 80s. Disturbing places in their emptiness, depicting activity halted over 150 years ago. I thought about the occupants of those places, before they were moved. Looking out of rare glass windows over Congress, Red River, forever transferred to different views.
So I'm saying I probably will need Tangina when I accidentally dig up some artifact while installing my pocket prairie and set loose an ancient curse etc.
Here I was trying to write about liking something new and I'm back on my bullshit.
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