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10:37 a.m. - 2005-02-20 Is This Just A Pipedream?Yesterday I went out to Elgin with a list of houses I saw on the realtor.com site. These included the house pics I posted two weeks ago along with a few more. This was quite a disappointing trip. I mentioned before that Elgin is an old city and it is a city....rife with all the pleasures and problems of any other city, including beautiful, well kept neighborhoods surrounded by slums full of crack houses. I started off in one neighborhood of stately 1920's era...almost mansionlike beauties with manicured lawns and impecibly restored structures. As I moved south toward the downtown area, the houses got progressivly smaller and shabbier and there was one side street that was a line of demarcation between the haves and havenots. A definite mark denoting the goldcoast and the slums...right on the same street. The historic districts were filled with wonderful restored victorians and bungalows however the historic districts are a neighborhood in transition and you are as likely to have a crackwhore for a neighbor as another old house afficianado. There was one house in particular that I was anxious to see. The photos of it showed the home of my dreams and indeed it was the home of my dreams. It was the home of my dreams in the middle of a complete slum. Now multiculturalism doesn't bother me. Elgin is half hispanic. If I buy a home in Elgin, there is a 90 percent chance I will have hispanic neighbors. This is not a prolbem for me. The hispanic population is no longer relegated to the slums. Many of them are 2nd generation and many of them have brought themselves up to an economic level that us white folk have enjoyed for centuries. To me a well kept neighborhood is a well kept neighborhood. I think I may have a problem convincing the old man of this and he had better get himself a new attitude as our daughter is in love with, and likely to marry a wonderful young man named Manuel. Everyone calls hime Manny. He is also as American as anybody else born and raised in this country. We like him....we like him alot. My husband has no problem with him as a future son in law nor the eventualatiy of having little brown grandchildren, however, there is still this stereotype of a hispanic community not being able to be a nice community. In Elgin, there are both communities. There are neighborhoods infused with 2nd generation and well to do hispanics and then the slums which have less to do with the race of the occupants and more to do with their poverty. Elgin is a mixed bag. If you are going to live in Elgin, you had better not get too bent out of shape about the race, religion or socio-economic lot of the other city dwellers. Every time I mention Elgin to Mike, it puts him in a nasty mood. He just don't want to hear about it. He likes it here in the vanilla....every house looks the same.....every neighbor looks the same..boring suburb. He doesn't want an old house...as a matter of fact he doesn't want a single family home at all. He wants a nice condo where you pay someone else to shovel your snow and mow the lawn and take care of the roof and the aluminum siding. He also has no interest in gardening, growing tomatos or otherwise getting out of that recliner chair. I have almost decided that getting my single family home definitely means leaving him and going to Elgin or Aurora. I like Elgin better, I am more familiar with Elgin. I think Elgin offers more opportunities. There is one neighborhood in Elgin that I might stand a chance of getting him to move to, however it is a small area and the only house I have seen for sale thus far in that area is a 2 bedroom house that is almost as small as the one we have. Seeing as how a move to Elgin also means taking in my Mother In Law, a 2 bedroom house will not do. We need a 3rd bedroom...we need a 2nd bathroom. This neighborhood is adjacent to a huge beautiful 19th century park and museum called Lord's Park. It is graced with 100 year old trees and ponds and lagoons where geeese and ducks spend their days. The homes in this neighborhood are all meticulously kept and the neighborhood is cordened off from the others by the Grand Park, a busy street that has lots of shopping, and two major thoroufares. It is an island of 19th centruy nice with no connection to the slum. My next step is to finish getting this condo fixed up and ready for sale and then I will put out a word with the real estate agent out in the fox valley that I have been corrosponding with that the minute a home in our price range in that neighborhood becomes available, I want to be notified and a show date set up. I will then make my move. If that neighborhood is not nice enough for him, then we might as well start having the argument that will start either his attitude change or our seperation. I intend to have a house and with what we can afford, it will HAVE to be in Elgin. One other thing I want to mention. When I left the house yesterday, Mike was up waiting for our neighbor the plumber to come over to install a new cartridge in our bathroom tub fixture. When I returned home, I returned to a brand new installation and 1/2 the wall in front of the tub cut out. The pipe behind the wall was leaking and the wall was soft. The 30 year old fixture was completely siezed up. The whole wall will have to come out and be replaced and retiled. Mike covered the hole the plumber cut with a garbage bag and duct tape. We will leave it taped for a week to make sure all solder joints in the pipe repair hold solid, then we will have to call antoher repair man to take out the rest of the wall, install new green board and retile. The bonus I received from the old pallet company owner was intended to fix my kitchen...now it is going to the bathroom. Something happens every time I go to fix up that kitchen. The kitchen needs to be fixed up before we sell the house so I guess we will have to refinance and borrow extra money to do that. Before we do though, I am going to get some estimates done and be prepared to start the work. Once that money comes, I will have the work done immediately before something else can happen to suck the money out from underneath me. We need to make about 10,000.00 worth of repair on this house. New cabinet refacing, new countertop, new kitchen floor, new carpeting and 6 new windows....before we can sell it and get top dollar for it. Then I will buy a new old home and start all over again. Maybe I will just stay here. P. I. Yarnsmith
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