mystery history

We bought this house, the one we live in, in 1997. The older couple we bought from seemed nice enough. They were cute in a cheap "everything we did to the house came from Sears in 1977" kind of way. Like any new home owner there were some odd "things" that we sometimes wondered about before and after we had purchased the house.

For example, the previous owners were very concerned about their safety. They had the house burglar alarmed. We had that (not at all) lovely silver foil tape on all the windows. Also, the previous owners installed a little tiny red light next to the front door that looked like an alarm, except it was a fake and had nothing to do with the real alarm system and the little red light never went off. There were panic buttons in most of the rooms, including right over the head board of the master bed. All the fire/smoke alarms were not just inside each bedroom doorway like you have to have if you are being inspected by the town but instead installed just inside each bedroom window. (Molatov cocktail anyone?)

The previous owners had pushed out the back of the house because it was important for them to seat 30 for dinners. They had the longest dining room table I have ever seen. They let us know they entertained like this often. Our initial dining room (before we remodeled it) was 24 feet long and had crazy looking and oh so slippery Portugese tile for a floor. There was (and still is) a bank safe in the basement. It weighs about a ton and will most likely be in the basement until someone tears this place down and removes it with an excavator. Guess who lost the combination for it! And finally when the previous home owner was giving me one last tour of the house to show me how things worked he showed me where to hide all my cash. Huh?

Needless to say I have decided (about twelve seconds after we closed on the house) that the previous owners were actually mobsters. Cute adorable mobsters, but mobsters none the less. We (I) often joke about them and the potential bodies buried in the concrete basement floor. Or other mobster type jokes. And here is something I have never told anyone, before we renovated the house I was sure I could hear ghost voices in the kitchen.

Imagine my shock the other day when I retrieved my phone messages and there was a message from Mrs. previous owner asking me to call her. She didn't say what she wanted. Gulp. I was worried. I started to sweat. I was sure they had to come back for something. I wondered what (or who!) they could have possibly left here that they needed to come back for. I imagined them bringing in their people to dig up the basement, search the cash hiding place for stolen jewels, revealing all the laundered money they had been storing beneath the floor boards, or even setting up shop in our now purified non-crime-family-related domicile. I imagined having to shield my kids from all the illegal activity they were going to bring into my home. It is my home now dammit, I wasn't going to let them corrupt it! Let what ever it is stay buried. But I had to know what it was she wanted. I just had to cal her back.

So, I took a deep breath and called her back and she said (here it comes) she had been going through her address book and wondered how we were. I had sent her a holiday card the first few years after we moved here and it seems she really liked getting them. She asked about the kids and then she. told. me. everything. I know how cold it is in her part of Florida, how she had to take her orange tree down a few years ago because there was a fungus problem in their area but now it should be time for them to be able to plant new ones and she really does love having fresh oranges. Honeybells are in season right now. Also Mr. previous owner hasn't had the best health, he had a triple bypass surgery but just won't watch his diet. Their daughter gave them two grandkids but their son is still enjoying the swinging bachelor life... isn't it a shame how men don't feel like they need to settle down these days? Their big house seems so empty now that their kids have their own homes but Mr. previous just doesn't want to give it up. And much much more.

I'm going to send her our holiday card. I'll include a nice note.

Maybe I'll never know what happened in this house before we moved in. Me and my imagination like it better that way.