I live in a house that is 120 years old. It’s been through a lot. Wars. Storms. Civil unrest. Christmases. Birthday parties. Deaths. Boy, think about it. How many arguments are embedded in the plaster? Bad vibes in the woodwork? Dogs (cats) buried in the yard?
Whose idea was it to put indoor/outdoor carpeting on the walls in the upstairs bathroom? Why had someone decided it was better put self-stick, vinyl parquet-like floor tiles over a walnut and maple hardwood floor? Who or what left those scratches on the back of the attic door?

What did the neighborhood look like when the house was new? Were there more trees? Was it more “country” than city? These were some of the questions I wanted answers to.

Detective work is in my gene pool (my father was a cop for 40 years). I started digging for answers. I became a regular at the library and the Historical Society.

My house? Built by a guy named Albert G. Eissler, who was a business man (commission merchant, accountant, bookkeeper) affiliated by marriage (his wife’s niece Margaret) to the Grede (as in Grede Foundry) family. Got that? I got it back in 1990 when I talked to Margaret, 92 at the time.

She told me that Albert was born in West Bend and that he had polio and walked with a cane. She said that he was, “ . . . a very nice gentleman, always driving his horse and buggy to work early in the morning.” She also said that she remembered my house. That there was a beautiful stained glass window in the front door (gone) and a built-in-buffet cabinet in the dining room (thankfully, still here.)

Albert was married to Emma Weiss, whose father owned a general store on National Avenue between 2nd and 3rd street. According to Mrs. Grede, Emma was on the stocky side, a homebody and people admired her for her beautiful head of hair, “ . . . too bad it was a hair piece!”

The lay of the land?
Well, on the southwest corner of 27th and National was the entrance to National Park.
52 acres of rolling hills, small lakes, a race track (horses), a fancy brick hotel and a roller coaster. And then, while sitting at a impressive oak table in the Milwaukee County Historical Society, with ill-fitting white cotton gloves that made my hands look like they should be on a cartoon character, I leafed through dozens of photographs . . . men in dark suits, with cinched-waisted, long-skirted women who posed in front of giant felled trees, next to rushing waterfalls . . . hunting parties in a clearing of white birch trees . . . outcroppings of boulders . . . pictures that looked like they came from somewhere else, Vermont? Connecticut?

No. My street. My block. This neighborhood.
The trees were felled. The brooks, the ravines, the streams, all filled in. What was rolling was leveled and laid out in an orderly grid pattern of streets and alleys.

Regret consumed me. I resented the Powers That Were. Boy, I would have given anything to be at that meeting when it was decided to steam roll the virgin wilderness to make way for progress. Where was that Time Machine when I needed it? Damn!

What was lost, clouded my view of what could be.

In the case of my house, what was gone could be replaced or restored. I could buy another stained glass window for the front door. We could remove someone else’s bad taste, sand the scratches out of the doors, patch the holes in the walls.

I couldn’t restore the ravines. Or the lakes. Or the trees. I could only do my part by restoring my little corner of the world. Maybe making sure that what the future holds for this neighborhood will make up for what was lost.

And when I walk my dog . . . and we get to the corner of South 28th and Scott? I can hear the former rocky stream, rushing underneath the sewer grates.

Saturday was Valentine’s Day – which made me pause for a moment and assess the state of my relationship, and . . . after 26 years, I think we are in a rut, and by “we” I mean me and my neighborhood.

We’ve let ourselves go. Gotten too complacent. I’ll be the first one to admit that over the course of a long, cold, snowy winter, I may have let certain things slide . . . the last time I ran a razor over my legs coincided with the last day I gave up on tending to my lawn care duties sometime in October. Why shave when I’d be wearing long pants for the next 7 or 8 months? Why mow the lawn (or pick up dog poo) when it could snow at any minute?

Both of us have gotten a bit sloppy in our appearance. I blame this time of year. It’s those winter doldrums. I mean, the snow, much like my big puffy winter coat, covered a lot of sins like, my fat thighs, paunch and lack of a fashion sense. In the case of my neighborhood? The snow covered the litter, the sparse lawns and buried all the things that everyone decided could wait until spring.

And there’s always the What ifs – this was not my first choice for a neighborhood.

There were other suitors – the trendy East side, Bay View, ‘Tosa – they were attractive enough, but . . . this neighborhood? Well, it needed me. And, dare I say . . . I found it’s bad boy rough-around-the-edges vibe rather appealing, especially when it came time for my kids to invite friends, who lived in Brookfield over for a play date.

Me: Sure, Tiffany can come over this Saturday. We live on South 33rd Street off of National Avenue.
Tiffany’s mother: Oh (long pause) okay.
Me: Is that a problem? I mean, time wise?
Tiffany’s mother: No. No. It’s just that–I didn’t know–(long pause)Um . . . is it–I mean, that neighborhood . . . would the kids be safe playing outside?
Me: Safe? As far as what goes?
Tiffany’s mother: You know . . . crime?
Me: Well, my kids haven’t been involved in a crime spree in at least a couple of weeks.
Tiffany’s mother: (silence)
Me: I was joking.
Tiffany’s mother: I mean . . . on second thought, maybe your kids could come over here?
Me: Brookfield? Ooo. I don’t know. You don’t have sidewalks.

After so much time spent together, every relationship hits a wall, and ours is no different. I just wish that whoever keeps hitting the wall – or in this case, the decorative fencing on Layton Boulevard – would stop.

There was only one time when I was ready to call it quits. To throw in the towel. It was during one summer and there was a house on our block . . . let’s just say the people who lived there were engaged in nefarious activities that spilled out onto the street and my lawn. And after a while, I got sick and tired of it. Long story short? I informed the MPD and one day, they paid my neighbors a visit (that would be Copspeak for a bust). My former neighbors now have a different place of residence, somewhere in Waupun and Taycheedah.

We don’t keep in touch.

The street has never been so quiet. Come spring, when I sit on my patio, with my glass of white wine, I'll hear soft swells of Mariachi music, smell the garlic roasting from the Thai restaurants down National Avenue, and I’m in love again.

I grew up in a neighborhood where the people – like the two-bedroom ranch houses – were all alike. Short. Squat. White. The only color came in the rows of red geraniums regimentally planted in the flower beds at parade rest.

And then I went to college to study art and thought that I would put down roots in the neighborhood that surrounded UWM, because it was where I found “my people.” Unfortunately, putting down east side roots required coughing up a hefty down payment and no matter how many sofa cushions I looked under, or old coat pockets we went through, my husband and I came up a little short.

We were looking for an old house, something with a big yard, because we were going to have lots of kids – or dogs, we couldn’t decide. We found our fixer upper in a part of Milwaukee called Silver City. And, first impressions? Well, I have to say I felt a bit embarrassed for the old girl, much in the same way I did whenever I saw tabloid pictures of movie stars caught without their make up on. Have you seen Charlize Theron? Oh. My. God.

The house on 33rd street was a fading painted lady. Her front sagged (at over 100 years old my front would sag too), her sill was rotted, her stature had demurred, but, like Charlize, she had good bones. We dove in. Upgraded. Sanded. Stripped. Boiled. Ripped.

We decided to paint her in 3 colors – olive green, a darker green and a red. My parents, who still lived in the same subdivision, in the same house that I grew up in, thought we were nuts.

That was back in 1983, and we’ve only just had to have her re-painted. This time we ramped it up to 4 colors – a lighter green, gold, red and dark green. We added the red color at the last minute because the painters kept calling it The Green Bay Packer house, and while I am a fan, well . . . even I thought that was a bit too much.

Okay, I’ve got a lot of friends who live in Shorewood – I bet a picture of a tree-lined, bungalowed street just popped into your head, am I right? Other friends who live in ‘Tosa (cue up another tree-lined street) and others who live in Brookfield (insert standard subdivision image here!)

They all want to know about my neighborhood, why I live there – oh, that's fodder for another blog posting – and then they’ll ask me to describe it . . . and, I never had a succinct answer until now.

I live in . . . a neighborhood of color. Vibrant. Bold. Where the people are as diverse as the architecture – Milwaukee bungalows, Victorian worker’s cottages, brick colonials, houses designed by Wright and Russell Barr Williamson. White houses with green trim? Oh, please! Try something in a lime green and teal with rose accents. Lipstick red front doors. Purple trim. And, guess what? The families who live inside those candy-colored cottages, they’re not gloomy people. How can they be?

My favorite houses sit side by side on Greenfield Avenue. One is lime green, the other is a blue that reminds me of the warm waters off the coast of Puerto Vallarta.
On a dreary November day they dare me to be depressed, and guess what? Not going to happen.