Aug. 3, 1995

Dear Melina,

DC and I went to a neighborhood potluck a few days ago. Everyone there was at some stage of renovating an old house, either finishing up or starting out like us. DC was relieved to hear that a catastrophe every day is a way of life for them as well, or was for the first few years.

Old houses just don't work the way new ones do. Some of our windows don't exactly close, leaks erupt from pipes we didn't know we had, and the lights are operated by a maze of on-off switches that keeps us constantly guessing.

Last month when the numbers on the utility bill read $500-plus, we momentarily considered the possibility that all our leaks might be sinking the ship. Fortunately, our meter reader just had a misreading.

We wouldn't trade our old house for a new one, of course. Houses, like people, have much more to offer once they've earned their stripes, been through some storms, been loved and cared for by different people, been rearranged and put back together a few times. So all the parts don't work as well as they once did. Beauty emerges that didn't exist when the wood was new.

One thing old houses are good for is ghosts. Over pasta and grilled chicken and wine and ice cream with berries, we exchanged ghost stories. One told about a tenant whose dogs bark at nothing at all every morning at 3. The previous owners told ghost stories about our house.

There's the black cat buried beneath the bathroom window who may or may not have come back from the dead, and the housekeeper who quit when the cabinet doors she'd opened for cleaning suddenly all closed: bam bam bam bam bam bam bam.

"It could've been the wind," DC said weakly.

I've had no such experiences but DC, who's both skeptical and skittish about the idea of etheric beings roaming the house, has. In particular, the unexplained smell of smoke and footfalls on the back stairs.

But if we are haunted, it's a friendly ghost. And we have plenty of room.

Listening to these people talk, it was apparent that our concerns about our neighborhood and hopes for it are much the same. The solutions to the problems may differ, though. I'm not convinced that calling the police always ought to be the first move.

I want the drug dealers who sell to children in the park to see themselves just once in the mirror, the glassy-eyed guys who shoot craps on the sidewalk around the corner to take their business to the boats in Metropolis or Caruthersville or else, and the kids packing handguns just for fun to find less dangerous toys to play with.

I want DC to tend her garden without being assaulted by noise from car stereos designed to disturb the peace.

Like Kevin Kline says in the movie "Grand Canyon," "It's not supposed to be this way."

How is it supposed to be? Not the way it is in movies where violence is orchestrated like a ballet. They're like mass meditations. We look and the act of violating another person eventually becomes an image acceptable to our brains.

It's like watching Rodney King being beaten over and over. Eventually the blows failed to wound, like the make-believe punches in the movies.

I don't know how it's supposed to be. Just not this way.

I'm glad you called. Thought you'd dropped into the great graduate school void and whoomp, there you are in New York. I half-expected you to be in Bosnia, taking pictures of the violence. One more place that's not supposed to be that way.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.