READ AND SCROLL THROUGH: A House Becomes a Home — Dan Sheetz
We walked by a house with an Orange Tree and said, “We should live there one day.” The house was faded blue in color accented by pink rose bushes lining a rusty black gate and, you guessed it, bright orange oranges topping the trees around the house. It had an ornate Queen Anne style façade with huge bay windows and a front porch that was weathered from tenants sitting together and looking out onto S Hoover Street. We walked by a house with an Orange Tree and said, “We should live there one day.” It was me, Juan, Harry, Nate and Alex and, half joking, we kept walking past the house and went and did whatever it was we were going to do. It wasn’t a joke like “hahaha,” it was more like plans you make with your friends at 1:13am on a Saturday night. You know, the classic, “Let’s wake up early tomorrow and go to the beach!” You may really want to go to the beach, but you end up waking up at noon and doing nothing the entire Sunday. But the house stayed put, right where we left it. And every day, we would walk by the house with an Orange Tree, together or alone, and think, “We should live there one day.”
Fast forward eleven months to September of our junior year. My goal of living in the house never wavered, each time I journeyed down Hoover street reconfirmed my ambition to occupy that faded blue Queen Anne. I called the landlord every other day for three weeks asking when I could join the waitlist to tour the property. Every single call I placed was received by an unenthusiastic, and eventually annoyed, representative from Mosaic Student Communities. One day I called, the list had opened and we signed up for the first tour of the year. We looked at three places before stepping foot in the house with an Orange Tree outside. When we finally walked inside, we were floored. If we’re talking about the decor, the furniture, the appliances, there was nothing to write home about. But the specialness of the house wasn’t material.