We've been gone from Little Canada for more than 9 years and, mostly, haven't missed either the city's dysfunctional government, the totally useless Minnesota DNR, the grossly negligent and abusive MNDOT, or the mind numbing and dangerous racket from I35E. A friend sent me a text yesterday that read, “Check out ‘The Ugliest House in America’ season 4, episode 2 if you dare. Maybe watch it by yourself.” I knew before I even went through the hassle to do a brief trial YouTube subscription to MAX that it would be about our old Little Canada house.
We lived there for 18+ years and the place was a trashed public nuisance when we moved in. The previous owner was being foreclosed on and hadn't paid any bills for at least 6 months, the back of the garage and the kitchen were sliding into a pit (aka "and sand bottom swimming pool"), and there were toads living in the swamp (aka "basement"). The place was a 140-year-old mess, but Ms. Day loved it and had always wanted to live somewhere with "a lake in the backyard." I liked it well enough because it had an 850 square foot, 4+ car garage. But if you think owning an ancient, wood frame house is going to be a positive experience you are an idiot. If you think maintaining 2 1/4 acres next to a decrepit, abused "lake" is going to be fun, I recommend recommend stocking up on anti-depressants. You're going to need 'em.
Because we'd sold the house to a couple of guys we kinda liked, I sucked it up and swallowed my feelings about the work it had taken, the money I'd poured into that house, and the fact that the neighborhood, city, state, and even the feds thought our historic lake was a trash dump for their lousy freeway design. No more.
I'm going to writing a lot about home ownership in general, our experience with realtors and real estate "professionals" over the past 50 years, and more . . . far more on my new Substack page titled "MY UGLY OLD HOUSE(S)."
Over and out.
