To follow up on this earlier posting…
I accepted an offer yesterday to sell the house I grew up in. I lived there from age 2 until about 23 and it's one of only four homes I've ever had. The first was before I was two and I have no memories of that dwelling. The one before the home I'm currently in was an apartment on Croft Avenue here in Los Angeles. I was living there when I started working for Sid and Marty Krofft and that occasionally caused confusion. Once, for instance, I had a friend who was either going to meet me at home or at the office and he phoned and left a voicemail that said, "I'll meet you at Croft [or maybe Krofft] at 2 PM." Uhh…
There was another odd coincidence to that apartment. They've since moved it elsewhere in town but Dark Horse Comics used to have a small office in a building at Croft Ave. and 3rd Street — and publisher Mike Richardson had a view out his window of my old apartment. That was the apartment in which Sergio Aragonés and I began doing Groo the Wanderer, which is now published by Dark Horse.
Anyway, the house I grew up in — the one my father bought for a bit over $17,000 in 1953, the one my mother lived in until she passed away last October — will belong to strangers following a 45-day escrow. In that span, I need to get out the last items that I want, distribute furnishings to friends who may want them, clean the place out and have it fumigated and retrofitted. There's a very old O'Keefe and Merritt stove in the kitchen and I'm told that if I find the right expert, he'll come in, pay me a few thousand bucks for it, then restore it and sell it for five times what he pays me. I need to find that expert. There's also a rug in the living room that my mother used to tell me was very valuable and that when I inherited the house and sold it, I should get someone in who'd pay me properly for it. We'll see if she was right.
And then I have this other goal: I want to see if I can get Time-Warner to stop sending me bills for the disconnected cable TV service there before escrow closes. Wish me luck.
Every realtor I spoke to about selling the house asked me if I had any emotional attachment to it. Nope. None. I had plenty to the lady who lived there but without her, it's just a house I happen to own. Sure, there are lots of happy memories but I can still have those without owning a house I don't need.
It sold quickly. The realtor predicted a five-day sale and it took a bit longer than that…but I was in no hurry so it's fine. I thought the buyers, whoever they might be, would either tear it down or build it way up but the high bidders say neither. They intend to move in, fix only what needs to be fixed right away, and live there. I hope they're even half as happy in it as my family was.