Final Assignment; Reflection

English 1010
Haley Stokes
01/24/2010

“Welcome Home”


Last December I bought a new home. The price was low for a five bedroom house. I felt fortunate! The owner was so eager to sell, that even he payed for a new roof and electrical work. Of course there would be a few things that needed to be fixed. The house had been vacant for over a year, or so I thought.

My new neighborhood is on a little avenue just off of State Street. At first we had reservations about moving into a home so close to such a busy road. There are cheap motels, tattoo parlors and head shops along State. It's a little seedy. But, once you pull into our road, it's nice and quiet. The houses are well kept with cute yards. The neighbors are friendly. Several houses lay vacant here, but they're not run down or shabby. Having lived downtown in bustling areas most of my adult life, it felt nice to have a peaceful place to soon call home.

Before closing on the house, I’d occasionally check on it like a stalker. I would walk the yard, leaving my tracks in the crusty snow. I'd peer in the windows, and imagine how I’d decorate. One thing I always noticed; the door on the back of the garage was ajar upon every visit. The basement door was often left unlocked too. I thought we just had an absent minded handyman coming and going.

After closing on a house, It's not officially your property until you have the title. My wife and I took this time to start painting rooms. The realtor said that would be okay, as long as we didn't move anything into the house.

We bought a used hot tub and stuffed it in the garage (Its not the house, right?). I put a padlock on the door just in case anyone got ideas about taking it. You know how hot tub thieves can be.

The morning before the house was officially ours, a strange thing happened. My brother in law, Jay, who is moving in with us, sent me a text. “Someone has broken into the house.”

I rushed to the new place to inspect the damage. The basement door at the back of the house had been kicked in. There was a dirty shoe print right where the deadbolt was caved in on the door. I was petrified, imagining the place would be wrecked. Jay tells me the house is clear, and everything is intact. Two steps in, we find the first clue. Its a cigarette butt, smoked down to the filter.

Jay is a smoker. I asked him if he knew the brand of the cigarette by the butt. When you’re broke you buy generic. If you have money, you smoke a premium brand. As a seasoned smoker, he knows the tobacco spectrum.

After close inspection, Jay says, “It is a Gold Coast cigarette. Very cheap."

This was a clue. We now had a detail for criminal profiling. A person who buys cheap cigarettes broke into our vacant house and smoked one upon entering. My paranoid mind starts eliminating suspects from the top. The cheap cigarette ruled out a mobster or a ninja.

Nothing was missing. The tools and ladder were still in place. The c.d. player and ipod dock were still right where we left them. This ruled out a burglar.

This person had no problem breaking and entering, yet didn't vandalize the interior. We left buckets of paint and brushes out in the open, and they went untouched. This ruled out a juvenile delinquent on a damage spree.

In the master bedroom, I found another clue. A second cigarette butt of the same brand lay on the floor. It had blood on it. Gross! I carefully put it in a ziplock baggie. At least we didn't find blood anywhere else. This room has a door leading back outside from the upstairs floor, which was unlocked. This must have been our intruder's exit point.

A person broke in and did nothing! I was angry, afraid, amused, and perplexed all at once. My inner detective was called back into action when our realtor advised us not to call the police. She told us we couldn't file a police report on a house that “technically” wasn't ours yet.

I searched the grounds for more clues to present to the police later. So far I only had a shoe print and two cigarette butts (one bloodied). At the garage door, however, I found a fourth clue. Dirty shoe prints below the padlock. Someone tried to get into the garage. They were unsuccessful, so they crossed the yard, went to the basement, and found an easier door to kick in. This house had been vacant for over a year. It is freezing outside. Was this break-in the work of a mad squatter? All of those open garage doors? The occasional unlocked house? I now had a meaningless conclusion that made me feel no more secure than a bashed in door.

In the meantime, we barricaded the vulnerable basement entry way. From inside, we jammed a few boards and a metal pole up against the back of the door. On the outside of the door we hung a smiley-faced snow man wreathe with several bells on it. I hauled our huge blue recycling can down the stairwell and put it in front of the door. Back on the inside, I installed not one, but two dollar store alarms that make an annoying high pitch squeal when set off. By the time I was done, I felt I'd created an impenetrable break-in obstacle course. I'd have liked to see somebody haul that monstrous can on wheels back up all of those steps, and try to kick that door in again without waking up the neighborhood!

Later that afternoon, our realtor called us with good news. The house was officially ours. Since the break-in occurred before we had the title, the seller agreed to replace the broken door. We could now call the police to investigate.

When the officer arrived, I gave him a tour of the crime scene. I knew he wouldn’t take fingerprints, but what about cigarette butts? Shoe prints? A DNA sample? No. I told him the conclusion I'd come to about the perpetrator and he agreed with my assessment. He told us our house flaunted clues of vacancy. It was winter, and the sidewalks were not shoveled. The porch lights weren't on, and there was a for sale sign stabbed in my front yard. On top of that, there are 3 other vacant houses and a motel between my new home and a busy state road. This house was ripe for a break-in under those conditions.

The officer told us all about our new neighborhood, and what to expect from vagrants and traveling hookers who populate the area every summer.

Before he left, he took a long look at our newly painted front room. He had the confident posture of a hardened cop and a dead serious look in his eyes. I thought he was going to give us other dire warnings.

“I like the paint colors you chose” he said. “The brown of the accent wall really brings the room together”

“There’s a lot you can do with your house.” he continued. “Have you thought about vinyl lettering? You could put a phrase on the wall. I do all the decorating at my house. My wife isn’t good with that sort of thing.”

The home deco talk went on for 10 minutes, and was weird enough to distract me from an otherwise harrowing day. The officer had all kinds of advice. Unfortunately, none had to do with feeling better about the fact that any given person may break into any given space, and do whatever they can get away with, given the opportunity.

The break-in was a stressful situation, but I was lucky enough to have been host to a gentleman intruder of sorts. I imagine a haggard, cold, shutout breaking into his old squatting grounds one last time. He had a couple of smokes and got some rest. Maybe he looked at our accent wall and wished us well by not urinating on our bedroom floor. He was thoughtful in his own way, I suppose. Though he never came back, he will be the faceless person I think of when I dare lay out my welcome mat.