Tales of a Homeowner: Hidey Hut

Once upon a time I inherited a small amount of money from my grandparents.  I immediately thought of all the traveling I could do with that money, but also knew how much my grandpa abhorred me traveling and living abroad.  I felt like it would be an abomination to his memory to use his money on something I knew he hated.  So I bought a small house instead.  A house in Kansas is something he would have very much approved of, and I am a people pleaser - apparently even dead people.

I knew that I didn’t want to be paying the thing off for 30 years, like most people, so I set my sights very, very low.  I looked at some real shit holes.  One day I drove by a house for sale that had a very Kelsey look to it.  I don’t really know what that means, it’s just something I feel.  Anyway, I asked my realtor if I could look at it, and I was immediately in love.  It wasn’t a shit hole per se, but it needed some work.  I saw beyond the hideous floor to ceiling wallpaper, dark, cramped kitchen, and wood paneling.  I saw a house slightly reminiscent of the farm I had lived on, with a big porch and lots of potential.

At closing, which happened to be the same day I arrived back from a month trip abroad to Spain, I met the previous owner.  She was pretty strange, but seemed harmless, and had a far away look in her eye when she ominously whispered - more to herself than me - “A lot went on in that house.  A lot.”  I just smiled and shook my head as though I knew what she was talking about as I grabbed the key and headed off to my house!

I immediately started tearing down wallpaper, and to the suggestions of others, the wood paneling.  One thing led to another, and pretty soon I had a full-on renovation with no end in sight.  Somehow I was convinced to tear out the brick chimney, and vault the ceiling in the kitchen.  Not equipped for all that myself, I hired a “contractor”.  

One morning, I arrived at the house to do some work and my neighbor yelled, “Hey!  I need to talk to you!  You need to get rid of that hidey hut in your backyard.”  I had no idea what she was talking about, so she explained, “Back in that corner of your yard, there’s a hidey hut.  The people who lived here before had a son named Bob**, and I think he’s living back there, so you need to get rid of it.”  Um, excuse me?  She said she thought he was harmless enough, but he did do meth, and it was probably best to get rid of him.  Cool.

Unequipped to handle this in addition to all the other house stuff going on, I put it in the back of my mind.  Then my contractor asked me to leave a key out for him.  I explained I couldn’t because there was apparently a guy living in my backyard.  I guess he didn’t believe me because the next morning when I got there he said, “Yeah, I talked to that guy living in your backyard.  Crazy!”  I just stared.  “I went back there and he was just laying in there playing on his phone.  He even speaks a little Spanish!”  And then he went on with his work as if he hadn’t just declared the most bizarre information ever to me.

My brother came over later and was helping me with part of my house that has a door to the outside.  It was hot, so we left it open, and pretty soon I saw a man emerge from the corner of my yard and walk straight towards us.  He stopped at the open door and asked us if we bought the house.  We just shook our heads no.  He then asked us if we knew how much the new owner paid for it.  Again, we shook our heads.  My brother asked him why he cared, if he had been interested in it himself, to which he responded, “Nah man, it’s just a Hebrews 13:8 thing.  You got a cigarette?”  We just kept staring at him without speaking, and after a few minutes he just walked back across the yard to his “hidey hut.”

I called the police the next morning.  It happened to be a Sunday.  I explained that there was a homeless meth addict living in my backyard, and the cop said verbatim, “Oh, well that’s something you have to talk to the Homeless Outreach team about.  They’re only in the office Monday through Friday, so you’ll have to call back tomorrow.  In the meantime, try not to watch any scary movies, hahaha.”  I was not laughing.

I called the Homeless Outreach team the next morning and they came to check things out, but Bob wasn’t in his hut, so they said all they could do was leave a note and hope he left on his own.  I was told not to mess with his things though because he might retaliate.  Neat.

I waited a week, but Bob wasn’t budging.  I called my dad to see if he would come help me clean out the corner Bob was living in - it was mainly a bunch of tree logs piled up, which is why I had thought nothing of it to begin with - but my dad told me he was busy that night, dance class.  I couldn’t get anyone to help me, so I got my uncle’s truck myself, and started loading it up.  I set Bob’s items in the alley behind my house so he could collect them, but threw away all the logs and took them to the dump.  My brother ended up showing up, as did a friend I had tried earlier, and eventually my dad.  They mowed my yard, removed the honeysuckle that shielded that corner, and helped with the last of the tree logs.  I noticed a couple days later that most of Bob’s stuff was gone from the alley.

Over this course of time I came to find out a lot about Bob - I even found his birth certificate inside one of the walls we knocked down in my kitchen (he’s only 3 years older than me).  I heard tales from the neighbors about “that time” he tried to burn down the trees in my front yard, how he housed a pregnant homeless woman in my shed while the house was on the market, how he tried to run over another neighbor’s husband with a truck, how he had a long rap sheet involving drugs and assault, and how his mom had tried to remove him from the property for years, but he just kept coming back.  Apparently I was the only one who didn’t know this information - all the neighbors, the realtors, and even the police knew what I was getting into, but I didn’t.

I still see Bob around every now and then when I go on walks, so he still “lives” in the area.  Though a couple days ago one of my neighbors died (a story for another day), and one of the cops investigating her death saw me walk across the street from my house and asked if I lived there.  When I said yes, he immediately asked, “Had any Bob problems?” He explained that he and Bob went way back, and he’s arrested him several times, and would always show up to take him away when his mom called to report him for trespassing, but she would never press charges.  He also said I probably wouldn’t see him for a while because he was arrested again recently - he was caught letting air out of a cop’s tires, and then tried to attack the cop with a sign…  “The only thing I like about Bob is that one day he said, “Officer Wright, you’ve been a cop too long.  You should be a captain by now.  You’re a captain.” so basically he promoted me, hahaha.”  Once again, I was not laughing.

**Bob is not his real name.