My wife assured me that the move to Norwich would be less traumatic than the one from New York . She was wrong. The move from N.Y. was plagued with drunken movers,truck crashes,fundamentalist militarized landlords andsome unexpected hazzards as well. The move to Norwich began with a HUD auction and a single driveby of a truly decrepit property that we would soon call Home. Being a native New Yorker , I had been routinely desensitized to STRANGE SIGHTS. So when I saw two shoeless hookers exiting the house nextdoor to our newly acquired HUD wreck ,I thought little of their slow saunter down the middle of Clairemont Ave. early that Sunday morning. You learn early in life that the presence of one or several prostitutes should not alter your consideration of a neighborhood as they might be exiting the home of some prominent cardiologist or local politico,both being beneficial flora in any neighborhood.In retrospect ii should have been alerted to the 'early morning Sunday' component of this equation but for some reason no internal alarms sounded. And so the die was cast , and a single snake eye came to rest.
You could not tell by looking that we had acquired a house on a block that was the center of a major drug manufacturing and distribution hub spanning several states and international borders,involving drug chemists,politicians,police and FBI agents,prosecutors,judges and junkies all working day and night to keep the lab and network humming,churning out millions of doses of ketamine,crack,and pretty much any other drug they could move. Sooooo......we began renovating our HUD wreck without so much as a hint of the fact we had passed through hell's own gates and moved into a nest of demons the likes of which I am sure will impress the most jaded of you,my readers.
