When I moved into Sebring Gardens in October 1989 travel trailers mixed with mobile homes. The mobile homes are the same, but man, have the travel trailers grown. Space was tight to begin with, now the seasonal visitors in their massive mobile homes and massive fifth wheels with their accompanying towing vehicles are really shoehorned into the same small camp sites.
The Amazing Mr. Ripley
(there's a good novel of that title: very good)
My neighbors used to walk. I and a few others also ride a bike. These days more and more neighbors are obese: and clog the roads with golf carts. One guy I don't think I've seen outside his golf cart in several years: Ripley. His wife too prowls the park in a golf cart. She needs to walk marathons; she doesn't walk at all. Her obescity is not only porcine but bears an appearance of malevolence. Unlike Ripley, Mrs. Ripley does on occasion get out of her cart: to poke her nose where it doesn't belong: as I'll relate below.
On day a year or so ago, c. 2008, I saw Dan, our landlord, on land to the south he's added to his holdings, land he is clearing. I rode over to him on my mountain bike: good gear system, knobby tires, good for off road. The fat guy is sitting there in his golf cart. I talk to
Dan, the fat guy and I ignoring each other as usual. While I'm talking, the fat guy put his golf cart in reverse and backs right into me! He didn't say anything! Neither did Dan!
He didn't ask if I was OK, if my bike was OK, if he'd done any damage!
One time in 2008 or 2009, while I was teaching line dancing at the Highlands Seniors Social, I wanted to practice some dances with my friend Joyce: the widow of a line dancing teacher I'm confident was as great at it as she swears he was. I like to dance with Joyce: both ballroom and line dance. I asked Dan if it would be OK if we used the rec hall some day if nothing else was visibly going on there. Sure, he said.
So Joyce and I are in the rec hall one day, with her boom box, practicing the Singapore Swing. In walks that fat guy's obese wife. Fine, she's a resident: she can walk anywhere she wants, around the common buildings and grounds. But she comes up to us and demands to know what we're doing! She interrupts our dance!
I've lived among moron barbarians all my life, I'm used to it. Still, it rankles sometimes. Especially since I've lived here for twenty-two years whereas she and her husband are newcomers, not to mention much younger than Joyce or I. I never have told Dan how he forgot to inform his gestapo that he'd given me permission to use the common facilities: specifically the rec hall, specifically for line dancing.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Friday, August 6, 2010
Yankee Trap
Since October 1989 I've lived in Sebring Gardens, a trailer camp on Brunns Road in Sebring FL. Brunns Road looks rural. On the east side there's a section of pine flat woods, and another of open meadow grazed by cattle, visited by flocks of egrets. I miss the horse that used to be pastured there. Sometimes in the distance you can see the Spauldings cultivating their caladium farm.
But don't be deceived: a dense population lives tucked out of sight. It wouldn't surprise me if the population density exceeded that of some parts of Brooklyn, or the Bronx. There, it looks dense; actually, many of the buildings are abandoned, house only squatters. Turn into any of the side roads, so innocent looking, and you'll pass dozens of mobile home trailers not visible from Brunns Road. They're all culs-de-sack: Brunns Road is the only access. Some snowbirds dwell in them, but more and more people stay year-rounder. Many non-resident vehicles use Brunns Road as an alternate N/S route, avoiding the lethal Highway 27, one half mile to the east. The posted speed limit is 25, but clowns with cell phones drive fast enough to flip over lengthwise when they put a wheel in the soft drainage ditch the plunges to the side of the pavement.
There are no sidewalks, no bicycle paths. Yet platoons of elderly pedestrians, especially in season, flex by in warm-ups. Bicycle pelotons pedal by. Cars, trucks, come ramming through.
Brunns Road is deceptive: not, I believe, by accident. The illusion of rural sparsity serves the developers who built the trailer parks. Their market is modest retirees from the north. These suburbanites from Detroit, Toledo, Lansing or Toronto wouldn't spend their life saving to move into a Bronx of burglarized low-rents festooned with broken glass and soda can pull-tabs; they do bestow their wad on a dream of woodland with a meadow with horses and cows. Instead of ten cows per person, Brunns Road is more like one hundred Yankees per cow.
Growing up on Long Island I'd heard of highschool kids racing to Fort Lauderdale for Easter vacation and getting caught in southern speed traps. Ticketing New Yorkers may have been the only cash crop of some of those burgs along Route 17. The rednecks and hillbillies with their gun racks in their pickup trucks, behind the driver's neck, don't intimidate by accident either. (When Hilary and I drove to Florida for a quick taste of warmth in the February of 1965 we were intimidated every stop of the way. Huge bellied guys would block the door to the convenience store. One sheriffs car would peel off our tail at the town border, synchro-replaced by another from that next town, radio-warned that the nigger-lovers were coming: we had given a ride to a black hitch-hiker: therefore, we were no more welcome than he!) (In 1965 it astounded this New Yorker how many of these arms-bristling trucks said "KKK" right on the door panels! Weren't there any liberal-assassins around to balance things?) (In another year or so Hilary and I (and our passenger) might have been shot!)
The Sebring locals years ago promised themselves that they could have government services without taxes if they just suckered in some Yankees: the Yankees could then pay the taxes for all.
pk, a veteran victim of the government-managed "education" swindle, would up here because I was too broke, too defeated, too resource-less, to go on: caught in the same trap with the Yankees lining-up-to-be-fleeced by the red necks. (Even had I a wad of my own, I could have done worse than wind up stuck in Highlands County: I do love the famous Hammock: and the waterways.)
(Don't for a second believe that this once-upon-a-time Yankee ever thought that Yankees were innocent — of anything! My comparisons between Yankee and Dixie are accurate, not invidious.)
But don't be deceived: a dense population lives tucked out of sight. It wouldn't surprise me if the population density exceeded that of some parts of Brooklyn, or the Bronx. There, it looks dense; actually, many of the buildings are abandoned, house only squatters. Turn into any of the side roads, so innocent looking, and you'll pass dozens of mobile home trailers not visible from Brunns Road. They're all culs-de-sack: Brunns Road is the only access. Some snowbirds dwell in them, but more and more people stay year-rounder. Many non-resident vehicles use Brunns Road as an alternate N/S route, avoiding the lethal Highway 27, one half mile to the east. The posted speed limit is 25, but clowns with cell phones drive fast enough to flip over lengthwise when they put a wheel in the soft drainage ditch the plunges to the side of the pavement.
There are no sidewalks, no bicycle paths. Yet platoons of elderly pedestrians, especially in season, flex by in warm-ups. Bicycle pelotons pedal by. Cars, trucks, come ramming through.
Brunns Road is deceptive: not, I believe, by accident. The illusion of rural sparsity serves the developers who built the trailer parks. Their market is modest retirees from the north. These suburbanites from Detroit, Toledo, Lansing or Toronto wouldn't spend their life saving to move into a Bronx of burglarized low-rents festooned with broken glass and soda can pull-tabs; they do bestow their wad on a dream of woodland with a meadow with horses and cows. Instead of ten cows per person, Brunns Road is more like one hundred Yankees per cow.
Growing up on Long Island I'd heard of highschool kids racing to Fort Lauderdale for Easter vacation and getting caught in southern speed traps. Ticketing New Yorkers may have been the only cash crop of some of those burgs along Route 17. The rednecks and hillbillies with their gun racks in their pickup trucks, behind the driver's neck, don't intimidate by accident either. (When Hilary and I drove to Florida for a quick taste of warmth in the February of 1965 we were intimidated every stop of the way. Huge bellied guys would block the door to the convenience store. One sheriffs car would peel off our tail at the town border, synchro-replaced by another from that next town, radio-warned that the nigger-lovers were coming: we had given a ride to a black hitch-hiker: therefore, we were no more welcome than he!) (In 1965 it astounded this New Yorker how many of these arms-bristling trucks said "KKK" right on the door panels! Weren't there any liberal-assassins around to balance things?) (In another year or so Hilary and I (and our passenger) might have been shot!)
The Sebring locals years ago promised themselves that they could have government services without taxes if they just suckered in some Yankees: the Yankees could then pay the taxes for all.
pk, a veteran victim of the government-managed "education" swindle, would up here because I was too broke, too defeated, too resource-less, to go on: caught in the same trap with the Yankees lining-up-to-be-fleeced by the red necks. (Even had I a wad of my own, I could have done worse than wind up stuck in Highlands County: I do love the famous Hammock: and the waterways.)
(Don't for a second believe that this once-upon-a-time Yankee ever thought that Yankees were innocent — of anything! My comparisons between Yankee and Dixie are accurate, not invidious.)
Thursday, August 5, 2010
250 Riverside
There, I've told quick versions of some of my most major landlord stories, all from Sebring Gardens. Now I take an anarchist's vacation by telling a relatively trivial landlord story: possibly my first landlord story: from when I was a graduate student, in the mid-1960s, in my first year of marriage. Hilary and I rented an apartment on Riverside Drive and 97th Street. I had to pay two months rent in advance: one months rent plus one months rent as security. The security was supposed to be refundable upon moving out.
We moved in, time passed, we moved out: time to get our refund.
I located the landlords (two guys, brothers) in their "office" in the basement. (My apartment had been largely without sunlight, the landlords dwelt wholly without sunlight: the riverside apartments were nice, spacious; ours was not riverside.) I invited the landlords to inspect the place: right now, I'm leaving, Give me the refund. They stalled, said they'd mail it next month.
I forget the specifics, that's the pattern. I demanded, they stalled. While they stalled I decided that they were the type of businessmen who paid promptly upon lawsuit: I'd never get a check short of a court date. I decided I'd better stick it out, become a thorn in their side.
Finally, trembling with fury, the brothers wrote me a check.
I wouldn't bother with the story except for this delicious detail:
The smaller brother hid behind the larger brother, jumped up and down and said, "Let me at him, let me at him!" Then the larger brother took a turn, hiding behind the smaller brother.
I am 5'8". I weighed about 135 at the time, 140 at the most: booze belly and all. But: I'm an athlete, an acrobat: a skier, in shape (except for the belly) (and the booze). These brothers had the same pallor their relatives would have had at Auschwitz. The big one was maybe 5'6", the little one was maybe 5'3". I doubt that the big one went more than 120. So funny: these pale stump fungus Jews threatening pk (windburned and surnamed Knatz!) with violence!
We moved in, time passed, we moved out: time to get our refund.
I located the landlords (two guys, brothers) in their "office" in the basement. (My apartment had been largely without sunlight, the landlords dwelt wholly without sunlight: the riverside apartments were nice, spacious; ours was not riverside.) I invited the landlords to inspect the place: right now, I'm leaving, Give me the refund. They stalled, said they'd mail it next month.
I forget the specifics, that's the pattern. I demanded, they stalled. While they stalled I decided that they were the type of businessmen who paid promptly upon lawsuit: I'd never get a check short of a court date. I decided I'd better stick it out, become a thorn in their side.
Finally, trembling with fury, the brothers wrote me a check.
I wouldn't bother with the story except for this delicious detail:
The smaller brother hid behind the larger brother, jumped up and down and said, "Let me at him, let me at him!" Then the larger brother took a turn, hiding behind the smaller brother.
I am 5'8". I weighed about 135 at the time, 140 at the most: booze belly and all. But: I'm an athlete, an acrobat: a skier, in shape (except for the belly) (and the booze). These brothers had the same pallor their relatives would have had at Auschwitz. The big one was maybe 5'6", the little one was maybe 5'3". I doubt that the big one went more than 120. So funny: these pale stump fungus Jews threatening pk (windburned and surnamed Knatz!) with violence!
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Not Allowed to Speak 2
Tod Bloemsma raised the rent and drove the park into the ground, then sold it to Harry Canfield. Canfield raised the rent more, drove it further into the ground, sold the park to Dan Littlefield. Ah, but Dan is a fairly good guy, has some sense, is actually an excellent landlord: has improved the park in a zillion ways and hasn't raised the rent just to raise the rent.
On taking over he knew I had sued Canfield and had won: not much, my lawyer betrayed his own case rather than let an anarchist (once he realized I was an anarchist) speak before a jury. More on that another time: cut to the cut: Dan called me in to his office on first arriving: get aquainted with the misfit, the trouble maker: show strength, lay down some law.
Dan's wife, Diane, was present. Straight off I told the Littlefields that I am a disciple of Ivan Illich, a disciple of Jesus, that I am the deschooler, that I became the deschooler after failing to communicate with my university: my doctoral committee having interrupted my interpretation of Shakespeare rather than listen to a new reading. I assured Dan and Mrs. that the entire society had refused communications from God, from Christ ... from geniuses, from saints, all along: and specifically from Ivan Illich, my mentor in deschooling, and from me. I told them how Illich and I had conceived of digital librarianship and cybernetic networking to unite Christians in conviviality, protecting us from coercive kleptocracy.
Specifically I told how Ivan Illich, as a Monseigneur in the Roman Catholic Church had told the Church that
If it wished to become Christian
It would have to give upits property
its professional priesthood.
(As an anarchist follower of Illich I wanted Americans to do the same, secularly: give up property, privilege, professionalism, replacing them with conviviality and competence.)
Dan stood up, excused himself, promised to be right back. In his absence, Diane Littlefield, Mrs. Landlord, said, "I don't think he should have been allowed to say that."
I don't know Diane's religious (or political) practice, if any. But what can she possibly have meant? She didn't believe that monseigneurs in the Church should be allowed to transmit messages from Jesus? Shouldn't be allowed to speak, period?
Who should forbid him?
The Church did defrock him: prevent him from saying additional masses, stripped him of his resources (which he then replaced by private means: writing best-selling books!)
Note: my saying what I say can be seen as a matter of supposedly free speech under the supposed Constitution; but Illich was not an American. I believe he resided in Mexico when he said that about the Church, though he would have said it repeatedly as he spoke publicly on every continent. I heard Illich speak: in Mexico, through his publisher, as a guest speaker at Fordham ... He'd speak in NYC and be back in Cuernavaca the next day. Local politics are silly for a globetrotting philosopher/saint.
There are so many details relevant here: not even Knatz.com could get them all said sensibly. Dan Littlefield may have been unclear on a point Harry Canfield would have been unable to explain. Harry had evicted me after Mike beat me up. For all I know Harry incited Mike to beat me up. Mike certainly knew that Harry, fundamentalists Baptist Harry, wouldn't mind if I got chopped in little pieces. So how come I was still in Dan's park?
Harry evicted me from the site Harry had rented to me: in 1997 or 1998, me having lived there since 1989. But years before, in 1991 or so, Catherine, in her eighties, the oldest resident left in the park and the longest-in-residence tenant, blind, deaf, crippled, had given me her trailer. So Harry evicted me from site 43, but to evict me from site 14, he would have also had to evict the old blind woman, the tenant most-senior by any measure.
But Harry will never know what's going on in any of his domains. Killing the messenger does not make the messageless wise.
On taking over he knew I had sued Canfield and had won: not much, my lawyer betrayed his own case rather than let an anarchist (once he realized I was an anarchist) speak before a jury. More on that another time: cut to the cut: Dan called me in to his office on first arriving: get aquainted with the misfit, the trouble maker: show strength, lay down some law.
Dan's wife, Diane, was present. Straight off I told the Littlefields that I am a disciple of Ivan Illich, a disciple of Jesus, that I am the deschooler, that I became the deschooler after failing to communicate with my university: my doctoral committee having interrupted my interpretation of Shakespeare rather than listen to a new reading. I assured Dan and Mrs. that the entire society had refused communications from God, from Christ ... from geniuses, from saints, all along: and specifically from Ivan Illich, my mentor in deschooling, and from me. I told them how Illich and I had conceived of digital librarianship and cybernetic networking to unite Christians in conviviality, protecting us from coercive kleptocracy.
Specifically I told how Ivan Illich, as a Monseigneur in the Roman Catholic Church had told the Church that
It would have to give up
its professional priesthood.
(As an anarchist follower of Illich I wanted Americans to do the same, secularly: give up property, privilege, professionalism, replacing them with conviviality and competence.)
Dan stood up, excused himself, promised to be right back. In his absence, Diane Littlefield, Mrs. Landlord, said, "I don't think he should have been allowed to say that."
I don't think he should have been allowed to say that.
I don't know Diane's religious (or political) practice, if any. But what can she possibly have meant? She didn't believe that monseigneurs in the Church should be allowed to transmit messages from Jesus? Shouldn't be allowed to speak, period?
Who should forbid him?
The Church did defrock him: prevent him from saying additional masses, stripped him of his resources (which he then replaced by private means: writing best-selling books!)
Note: my saying what I say can be seen as a matter of supposedly free speech under the supposed Constitution; but Illich was not an American. I believe he resided in Mexico when he said that about the Church, though he would have said it repeatedly as he spoke publicly on every continent. I heard Illich speak: in Mexico, through his publisher, as a guest speaker at Fordham ... He'd speak in NYC and be back in Cuernavaca the next day. Local politics are silly for a globetrotting philosopher/saint.
There are so many details relevant here: not even Knatz.com could get them all said sensibly. Dan Littlefield may have been unclear on a point Harry Canfield would have been unable to explain. Harry had evicted me after Mike beat me up. For all I know Harry incited Mike to beat me up. Mike certainly knew that Harry, fundamentalists Baptist Harry, wouldn't mind if I got chopped in little pieces. So how come I was still in Dan's park?
Harry evicted me from the site Harry had rented to me: in 1997 or 1998, me having lived there since 1989. But years before, in 1991 or so, Catherine, in her eighties, the oldest resident left in the park and the longest-in-residence tenant, blind, deaf, crippled, had given me her trailer. So Harry evicted me from site 43, but to evict me from site 14, he would have also had to evict the old blind woman, the tenant most-senior by any measure.
But Harry will never know what's going on in any of his domains. Killing the messenger does not make the messageless wise.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Assault
1997 I was attacked from behind while in my shed by Mike LaCroix, manager of Sebring Gardens trailer park.
I was washing mildew from Catherine's (and my) trailer. It was summer. Harry Canfield, the owner was away. Canfield had left this thug/manager Mike LaCroix in charge. The grass was knee high, but Mike saw me working and chose that moment to suddenly cut the grass: the grass specifically under where I was standing, working. Mike could have cut anywhere, there are seventy or so trailer lots, all with the grass knee high, uncut for weeks: but he drove the tractor to ten feet from me, demanding to cut where I was standing first, told me to move. I said, "Cut somewhere else, I'm working here." He reved the tractor and launched it right at me. I jumped aside, threw my mildew remover at him. He ran over my hose, shredding it, spraying water.
Mike was forever spraying people with pebbles from the tractor mower's spining blade. I bet I wasn't the only resident with chipped ankles. But I'd never heard of him trying to amputate legs. I gave my job up as dangerous under the circumstances, started putting things away in the shed. Mike attacked me from behind. I curled up, covered my head with my arms. Mike broke my fingers, pounding away at my head.
I'll transfer some of the story from Knatz.com and I hope will tell parts I've still never gotten to.
I was washing mildew from Catherine's (and my) trailer. It was summer. Harry Canfield, the owner was away. Canfield had left this thug/manager Mike LaCroix in charge. The grass was knee high, but Mike saw me working and chose that moment to suddenly cut the grass: the grass specifically under where I was standing, working. Mike could have cut anywhere, there are seventy or so trailer lots, all with the grass knee high, uncut for weeks: but he drove the tractor to ten feet from me, demanding to cut where I was standing first, told me to move. I said, "Cut somewhere else, I'm working here." He reved the tractor and launched it right at me. I jumped aside, threw my mildew remover at him. He ran over my hose, shredding it, spraying water.
Mike was forever spraying people with pebbles from the tractor mower's spining blade. I bet I wasn't the only resident with chipped ankles. But I'd never heard of him trying to amputate legs. I gave my job up as dangerous under the circumstances, started putting things away in the shed. Mike attacked me from behind. I curled up, covered my head with my arms. Mike broke my fingers, pounding away at my head.
I'll transfer some of the story from Knatz.com and I hope will tell parts I've still never gotten to.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Not Allowed to Speak
I have landlord stories both earlier and later than this one of people betraying their own interests, but I regard the following as a keystone. First a few background essentials:
Who pk is would be best gleaned from Knatz.com, fed censored in 2007, so, temporarily I hope, you'll have to make do with pk blogs.
I rented a lot to camp on in Sebring Gardens, a trailer park, in Sebring FL in 1989. The rent was $60 / month. The owner was Tod Bloemsma, son of the landlord of a big trailer park here in Sebring. I moved to Sebring Gardens to escape from Highland Wheel Estates trailer park also in Sebring: more of that later.
Sebring Gardens is a park with a few year round residents but mostly snowbirds: the park is full of trailers but few people are present off season.
In 1989 Sebring Gardens had lots of trees. This area had been pine flatwoods, all slash pine. All slash pine had been removed. Very few of the replacement trees were native: that is, frost tolerant. One or two oaks had been planted but most of the trees were fast growing junk trees: Australian pine, melaleuca ...
The winter of 1990 had severe frost. Many of the trees were frost damaged: had dead branches, or the whole tree had died.
In the spring of 1990 Tod Bloemsma was told by the state of FL to remove the dead trees. Months passed.
In the summer of 1990 there was a freak tornado. It began on Brunns Road, swept through Sebring Gardens, ran east toward Highway 27, and disspitated: It swept for one half a mile: all damage was concentrated in Sebring Gardens. Trees, branches fell on trailers, on sheds: the same trees the landlord had been told by the state to get rid of.
Residents present that summer: me, pk; Marty and Hick Hickman, the Georges. Catherine Kaltner had visited Ohio: I had not yet met her. That was it.
I saw damage to snowbird trailers and sheds without looking hard. "Hick" Hickman was hired by snowbirds to watch their stuff, had keys to many trailers. Mr. George was furious, swore he would sue. I had no damage but sympathized. (I had nothing but contempt for the landlord who utterly ignored his property except to collect the rent. He lived in a trailer next door but worked full time and overtime for this father's trailer park. He was seldom present and paid little attention then: just as he had paid no attention to the state order to make the park safe from the dead wood.)
Marty Hickman and I agreed to form a committee in investigate facts and options. I got an appointment with a lawyer, Clifford Able, Esq.
Fact review:
Frost damaged the trees, making them dangerous.
The state told the landlord to take care of the danger. He didn't.
A tornado knocked down dead branches and trees, damaging properties, most of the property owners north for the summer.
Mr. Able agreed to check on the law. Understanding that we could not afford to hire him and that the majority of the residents were absent until October, he volunteered to attend the October tenants association meeting, prepared to answer questions still unhired. If the association then hired him, fine: otherwise his labor was his good deed.
October arrived. The evening before the meeting arrived. At twilight a couple of officers of the association called me over. Rev. Hall was present. They told me that I was not a member of the association and that neither I nor "your lawyer" would be allowed to speak at the meeting.
The following morning I managed to reach Mr. Able and told him not to bother to show up: the tenants had agreed to sabotage their own rights.
Mr. George, who has sworn that he'd sue, said, "Oh never mind, my insurance company paid."
Instead of being shocked at the tenants passivity at being damaged, the legal counselor was mad at me: I was the one who'd wasted his time!
Marty Hickman never acknowledged that we'd formed a committe, that she and Hick had driven me to the initial appointment with Mr. Able. "No one in this park will help you, Paul," she said: especially not since I'd spent my life trying to help them!
Months later the landlord told me that he'd heard that I'd gotten a lawyer to try to get the tenants association to sue him. No, no, no: to inform them of the law, of their rights, and to be available if any wanted to take legal action.
Catherine Kaltner returned from Ohio. She became my best friend, and patron. She told me that she had hired her contractor to repair her roof, damaged from the tornado. She never knew that anyone had sought to coordinate tenant rights and damages. She never knew that I had even tried to clarify the law. Typical: Catherine resisted being told such things: just like the association: just like the whole self-damaging society.
I rented a lot to camp on in Sebring Gardens, a trailer park, in Sebring FL in 1989. The rent was $60 / month. The owner was Tod Bloemsma, son of the landlord of a big trailer park here in Sebring. I moved to Sebring Gardens to escape from Highland Wheel Estates trailer park also in Sebring: more of that later.
Sebring Gardens is a park with a few year round residents but mostly snowbirds: the park is full of trailers but few people are present off season.
In 1989 Sebring Gardens had lots of trees. This area had been pine flatwoods, all slash pine. All slash pine had been removed. Very few of the replacement trees were native: that is, frost tolerant. One or two oaks had been planted but most of the trees were fast growing junk trees: Australian pine, melaleuca ...
The winter of 1990 had severe frost. Many of the trees were frost damaged: had dead branches, or the whole tree had died.
In the spring of 1990 Tod Bloemsma was told by the state of FL to remove the dead trees. Months passed.
In the summer of 1990 there was a freak tornado. It began on Brunns Road, swept through Sebring Gardens, ran east toward Highway 27, and disspitated: It swept for one half a mile: all damage was concentrated in Sebring Gardens. Trees, branches fell on trailers, on sheds: the same trees the landlord had been told by the state to get rid of.
Residents present that summer: me, pk; Marty and Hick Hickman, the Georges. Catherine Kaltner had visited Ohio: I had not yet met her. That was it.
I saw damage to snowbird trailers and sheds without looking hard. "Hick" Hickman was hired by snowbirds to watch their stuff, had keys to many trailers. Mr. George was furious, swore he would sue. I had no damage but sympathized. (I had nothing but contempt for the landlord who utterly ignored his property except to collect the rent. He lived in a trailer next door but worked full time and overtime for this father's trailer park. He was seldom present and paid little attention then: just as he had paid no attention to the state order to make the park safe from the dead wood.)
Marty Hickman and I agreed to form a committee in investigate facts and options. I got an appointment with a lawyer, Clifford Able, Esq.
Fact review:
Frost damaged the trees, making them dangerous.
The state told the landlord to take care of the danger. He didn't.
A tornado knocked down dead branches and trees, damaging properties, most of the property owners north for the summer.
Mr. Able agreed to check on the law. Understanding that we could not afford to hire him and that the majority of the residents were absent until October, he volunteered to attend the October tenants association meeting, prepared to answer questions still unhired. If the association then hired him, fine: otherwise his labor was his good deed.
October arrived. The evening before the meeting arrived. At twilight a couple of officers of the association called me over. Rev. Hall was present. They told me that I was not a member of the association and that neither I nor "your lawyer" would be allowed to speak at the meeting.
The following morning I managed to reach Mr. Able and told him not to bother to show up: the tenants had agreed to sabotage their own rights.
Mr. George, who has sworn that he'd sue, said, "Oh never mind, my insurance company paid."
Instead of being shocked at the tenants passivity at being damaged, the legal counselor was mad at me: I was the one who'd wasted his time!
Marty Hickman never acknowledged that we'd formed a committe, that she and Hick had driven me to the initial appointment with Mr. Able. "No one in this park will help you, Paul," she said: especially not since I'd spent my life trying to help them!
Months later the landlord told me that he'd heard that I'd gotten a lawyer to try to get the tenants association to sue him. No, no, no: to inform them of the law, of their rights, and to be available if any wanted to take legal action.
Catherine Kaltner returned from Ohio. She became my best friend, and patron. She told me that she had hired her contractor to repair her roof, damaged from the tornado. She never knew that anyone had sought to coordinate tenant rights and damages. She never knew that I had even tried to clarify the law. Typical: Catherine resisted being told such things: just like the association: just like the whole self-damaging society.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Landlords
Landlords, Neighbors
Failures at Convivial Groupings
2011 01 17 I begin to add this section of landlord stories, of kleptocratic failure at community stories, here, pretending that I posted them 2010 August, beginning on the first: so I can control the order to some extent. Stories of neighbors, fellow residents, will also be told, in this grouping.
Such stories originally went at Knatz.com to K. / Personal / Stories / Themes / Community / A revised K. would put them in K. / Teaching / Society / NoHier / HierCon / Community: meaning / / / AgainstHierarcy / Hierarchy versus Conviviality / Community /
Now I'll name the posts by sub-theme. Next is Not Allowed to Speak: Understand the expanded implications: Knatz.com / Teaching / Society and its Pathologies / pk Against Hierarchy / Hierarchy versus Convivial Christianity / Failure at Community / pk not allowed to speak.
Ditto for the stories following this "2010 August."
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