Keep On the Sunny Side

Jae and I have been talking about either selling or renting our house with plans to move out of Orlando and securing digs on some acreage away from the ever-increasing din. She's lived here for almost 30 years and I've been here with her for the past 20. For most of that time, it's been fairly decent for living in a mixed-use zoning area (that's commercial and residential properties sharing space) that's heavily gentrified and very poor. A lot of folks don't know this, but we both live in the ghetto, in one of Orlando's absolutely worst neighborhoods.

Our house is just one block off of Orange Blossom Trail in Holden Heights, which was notorious at one point for the number of prostitutes, strip clubs, crime, and police activity along its route between downtown and south Orlando. The south side of our street is all houses. The north side of the street is a liquor store, a church (yes, right next to each other), a landscaping company, and, taking up a whole block is a Days Inn. On the same block is an automobile chop shop, a business that sells pavers, and a warehouse that sells home furnishings. To the east is a used car lot, a row of repair shops, and a gas station. To the west is an industrial office complex. Interstate 4 looms outside of our kitchen window along with its incessant white noise: the I-4 roar.

On the residential side, we have beautiful neighbors to our left and right that we cherish and interact with. Behind us, and scattered elsewhere across the block to our rear, are neighbors that relish in playing loud music, working on their car stereos at all hours, throwing parties, screeching tires, zipping around on motorbikes, and kicking off their mornings at 8 am with loud, predatory bass drops.

It didn't use to be like this. I remember. And it gets worse every day.

It's gotten so bad that it's made production fairly difficult here. I have to seek out quiet times and lulls in the activity in order to record, have had to figure out their scheduled mayhem so that I can pinpoint the most likely moments where I can secure an uninterrupted take. This is exactly why it takes so long for me to record an album and why you hear so much background noise during "Dulcimerica" and other productions.

The businesses, we can't do much about because it's mixed-use zoning. The loud neighbors, I've tried for years to reason with them, nicely ask them to be more considerate, given up and we've called the cops so many times, to no avail. I finally started setting up my concert rig with ALL the subwoofers and tossing some craziness back in their direction, just to prove a point. It's all gotten very exhausting, beyond frustrating, and along with the alarmingly increased crime activity in the neighborhood (shootings are commonplace, as are police helicopters shining spotlights on our house and convoys of no less than 15 police cruisers screaming down our street towards the most recent mayhem), we just don't feel like being here anymore.

We'd love to stay in this home. The one we've poured so much love and time and effort into. It would be nice to remain here, close to everything we enjoy so much, near friends and family. It would be wonderful if we lost some of the noisy neighbors, with their complete lack of regard for long-time residents and their apparent lack of interest in at least cleaning up the sprawl of beer cans and bottles that litter their front yards after another night of high-decibel carousing.

But that's probably not going to happen. We've both watched it happen over the years. It's not getting better. It's getting worse. And we still have prostitutes walking our streets, there are still people strung out on drugs doing strange dances in our front yard and there are still other people that we've never seen before doing slow walk-bys and peering at our blinded windows. We still hear gunshots every now and again. And some of you may not know about the time that a fugitive actually jumped into our yard while Jae and I were standing there, police hot on his tail. Or the time that three guys stole a bunch of stuff from a neighbor's house and then took it all into my old RV, where they hid until cops came knocking and I told them that my rig was unlocked. (And I DID press charges against those creeps, who had the nerve to eat my fruit salad while they waited to make their escape.)

I don't talk much about all this because I try to remain patient and positive, remembering that it can always be worse. “Just keep on swimming,” Dory says, and we try to do that. But it's literally gotten to the point where an entire day of work, what I need to do for a living, is put on hold due to the lack of consideration around our embattled place of residence.

Some good friends of mine from central Ohio lived on a beautiful 100-year old farm and I'd visit them, in awe of how gorgeous and tranquil and calm it was. Then, someone sold the farm across the road to a developer who proceeded to build an allotment of cul-de-sacs and cookie-cutter houses that completely blocked the view of the sunrise and brought a bunch of city folk who had no respect for their tenured new neighbors. They eventually sold the farm and got out. What could they do?

So, we're officially starting the process of pulling up tent stakes. We know full well that the actual move is probably a few years away, but the search is beginning now. As someone who grew up in Los Angeles, now residing 60 seconds south of downtown Orlando, I've had my share of living in the city and am ready to go someplace where the neighbors are scarce. I've visited some of you at your ranches and farms, always admiring the views, the peacefulness, and the separation from all of the chaos. That's what we're looking for.

I'd like to stay in my adopted state of Florida, for I know that there's a lot of affordable land available here. I also want to find a place that perhaps won't reveal a mass of development springing up across the street in ten years. Honestly, I want to find a place where I'd be happy to die (though I'm not planning on that anytime soon, which is why I want to GTFO.). We've also talked about North Carolina, East Texas, and Tennessee.

Sadly, I've got zero experience in home buying (I did sell a house once) and certainly no idea on how to go about finding a parcel of land larger than 2 or 3 acres. All we know is, we'd like a nice piece of property with maybe electric and sewer. We could live in the motorhome while building a home, if necessary, or find a modest home on a nice ranch or farm. I’ve got a very nice and helpful realtor that I’m working with and the search is on for some quieter and remote digs.

I try to stay positive as much as possible and can say that in all things, we are both still truly and wonderfully blessed. But we also can clearly see what's happening in our neighborhood and it's not likely to improve anytime soon.

I've been putting away funds for six years with an eye towards moving out of the city. It's a dream at this point, but as we know, those dreams do come true if you believe enough and work hard enough.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, I feel better just for having written it. And I have hope that we'll one day leave all of this Sturm und Drang behind. Until then, "keep on the sunny side, always on the sunny side."