And so it was that after a recent surgery to rebuild my knee I found myself at home for an extended period of time with nothing to do during the day but to luxuriate in a pain-killer induced buzz and watch daytime TV. Ironically, for the first time in years I actually had the time to read to my heart’s content, but I found I simply lacked the ability to focus on reading. So, remote in hand I searched for the right channel.
I quickly rejected CNN with its 24/7 coverage to keep me informed that Michael Jackson was still dead. The Fox network provided non-stop coverage of the failure of the American government, and MSNBC, curiously, would spend one hour projecting the demise of American capitalism and the next hour extolling the promise of American capitalism, which was perplexing. And so I ended up on the Home and Garden channel (HGTV).
It was a logical choice. If there is one trait that unifies residents of Coral Ridge is seems to be that we are obsessed with our homes. We love our East Side location and our stately trees but our old homes have small kitchens and miniscule closets. Our dining rooms are cramped and our little bathrooms are done in a 1950’s-era color palette that has never been seen before or since. Not so on HGTV.
A good portion of the HGTV programming is devoted to following different couples as they try to buy homes. Lying in my little bedroom next to a sherbet-colored bathroom, I found myself talking to the TV – as sure a sign of mental deterioration as I can think of.
There was the couple with only one daughter who rejected a perfectly fine house because it had only 5 bedrooms, and no where for the guests to sleep. “Marriott?” I suggested. There was the empty-nester couple who rejected a house with a 1700 square foot kitchen because it lacked cabinet space. “My entire house is 1500 square feet,” I hollered at the screen.
Another couple rejected a house of over 7,000 square feet because it “only” had a 2-car garage. “We really need a 3-car garage for more storage,” explained the wife. I was outraged: “You have 7,000 square feet!” I yelled at the screen – how much more stuff do you have to store?”
And so it went for the week. Couple after couple rejected houses with breakfast nooks and eat-in kitchens. Homes with “bonus rooms” and gyms, and bathrooms done in neutral shades.
As the week wore on and my pain abated I began to notice something I had overlooked: where these houses were located. As a rule they were located in the far-flung suburbs of anonymous northern cities, and these huge estates were selling for less than we in South Florida would expect to pay for an average condo in a not-great neighborhood.
Towards the end of the week I saw that HGTV was taking me shopping for a McMansion in Cumming, GA, a suburb of Atlanta. My interest was immediately piqued. My best friend and his wife actually had a gorgeous home in Cumming, which is as much a suburb of Atlanta as Coral Ridge is a suburb of Naples. Sick of being 25 miles from a grocery store or a restaurant they sold that huge home and moved to a small and crumbling old house in an in-town neighborhood in Atlanta very similar to Coral Ridge. They have tiny bedrooms, no closets and only 1 garish bathroom, but their house has character to spare and huge, huge old trees.
I turned off the TV and grabbed Time magazine and read that Michael Jackson was still dead.