The Sewers

When Jed was first diagnosed with leukemia at the age of four, we lived on N. main st. Red Lion, Pa. We were leasing a house with an option to buy. It was a house that was attached to another house. We were leasing the house from a man named Billitt. The house was a little beat up and needed some work. To move in it cost about $3000, with a portion of that going to the down payment if we decided to buy it. When we moved in ,the house next door was vacant. The house was only about $68,000. Like I said , the house needed some work. We had the floors stripped and stained. We fixed the attic and made it into another bedroom and also rewired a lot of the house. All together we put a little over $10,000 in to it. Not including the rent. The lease was for two years. I think the rent was about $550.00 a month. We never missed a payment and the owners wife said we were the best tenants they ever had. Then the house next door got sold to a family of four with two dogs. They had the same name as one of the supreme court judges. Jed called them the Sewers . Jed was sick and in bed a lot. The chemo made him very tired. This Leukemia thing was all new to us and we were scared to death. The reason I am telling this story is to tell about all of the different types of people we met because of Jeds illness. Like I said Jed was very tired and slept a lot during the day and night. Well as soon as the next door neighbors would leave to go to work, their dogs would start to bark. They would not stop barking until the owners got home. I figured the Sewers didn't know the dogs were barking because they were at work. I went next door and introduced my self and told them about Jed and told them their dogs barked all day. They said they didn't know that and that they would take care of the barking. Long story short, the dogs kept barking all day long and made it impossible for Jed to sleep. After telling the Sewers many times about their dogs, I had to call the police and make a report and complaint about the dogs. Well that pissed them off (the Sewers). From that moment on our life became hell living next to them. This house that we were going to buy had walls like paper. You could hear everything that was said. or moved, dropped. The Sewers made sure that they were as loud and obnoxious as possible. Every other word out of their mouth was the F word. Every morning you would hear Mrs. Sewer yell down to her husband from their bathroom. She would yell " D--e bring me a cigarette I'm on the shi--er and need to smoke" She has a very raspy voice. Like a man who smoked and drank to much. If it wasn't for Jeds illness it would have been very funny. Actually it was funny. Jed used to always mock her and say "D--e bring me a cigarette" trying to sound like her. Jed was so funny like that. These people smoked like chimneys . The house was built so cheap that you could smell the smoke in our house. I couldn't take it anymore and went over to their house and asked if they could not be so loud. I again explained to them about Jed and how he couldn't sleep with all their yelling and swearing. Jed was with me when I went over there. I thought maybe if they saw him they would understand. Instead Mr. Sewer said, now this is a quote, " I don't give a f;;k if he has cancer, I don't care if everyone on this street has cancer and dies, this is my house and I will do whatever I want" Unbelievable. As time went by everyone that lived by the Sewers sold their house and moved including us. I called Billitt, the person we were going to buy the house from , and told him that we would not be buying the house because of the Sewers. I told him that it was bad for Jed. I explained the whole situation to him. I asked him if he could refund $2,000 dollars because of all the work we put in the house. Of course he said no. He was pissed off because we were not going to buy the house. He said" what am I supposed to do now with it"? Then he said he had another house that is for sale on zimmerman road in Red Lion. It was a ranch style house that was getting remolded. It was $93,000. When we went there and looked at it we thought this could be alright. As we were talking in the basement I got a wiff of something foul. I told him that it smells like dead rats. He said " oh yea we had a mouse problem but we fumigated. Great, nothing like dead mice in your walls. We were desperate and told him that we would take it. We made an appointment to sign on Wed after work. After we thought about it we said there is no way that we can move Jed into a house that has had mouse crap and whatever else. When we told Billett that we didn't want that house he really got pissed. He then started telling people that we were bad tenets and didn't pay the rent on time. Wow, is wife said we were the best they ever had. If Billett would have gave us some money back he would have probably got it back ten fold. At that time just about everyone in our family was looking to either buy or sell a house. He most likely would have gotten most of the listings. Its like you save $2000 and loose tens of thousands. Thats great business. The guys like 67 years old. He should be retired instead of trying to sell crappy houses. Kristin did find a house around the corner from our old house. We drive by our old house and the roof of the Sewers house has a blue tarp of it, the porch railing rotted away and the chimney is ready to fall. Oh well, Karma is a bitch. I also heard everyone in the house has MERSA. I only wish them the best. I have lots of stories of the Sewers that I will write about at different times. This is just to write about all of the different people that I met because of Jed being Ill . Have a good day and hug your children.