We have found something in common with Donald Trump

Sept. 27, 2001

Dear Patty,

Amid the emotional turmoil of the past two weeks, DC and I have been trying to renovate the rental house we bought. In so many ways, our hearts have been elsewhere.

After spending my adulthood living in other people's houses and apartments, becoming a homeowner a few years ago was shocking enough for me. Now we have bought the house next door and are landlords. We have something in common with Donald Trump.

The houses aren't Boardwalk and Park Place. They're more like two of the Avenues, maybe Vermont and Oriental. Upgrades are required.

I never liked Monopoly.

Seven weeks into the renovation, no light and no tunnel are visible.

This realization came last Saturday afternoon as DC sent me off on a mission with a torn scrap of wallpaper. My job was to find new wallpaper containing the same color of green.

"What has become of my life?" I asked, holding the piece of wallpaper aloft. No answer could be divined in the flowered pattern.

Our parents have helped, but the task is overwhelming. The previous owner patched instead of replaced. Now new wallpaper and paint are flying, carpet is ripping, paneling is being torn down, cracked panes of glass are being replaced.

Little of that is occupying my hands. Due to the consensus about my ineptitude as a handyman, I am assigned more daring tasks, like tearing ivy off the north wall of the house. This ivy is no plant, it is a green monster that clings to bricks with the determination of a rock climber nearing the summit of Half Dome. It has insinuated itself inside the dining room windows on the first floor and the bedroom windows on the second. It wants our house and has secret weapons.

Those would be the wasps hiding in the ivy. All living things have a right to thrive, but homeownership has us making exceptions for ivy and wasps. I have attacked the wasps with a poison spray that shoots farther than a Super Soaker. When the spray lands, squadrons of wasps immediately get airborne looking for an invader. I bound off the ladder and sprint toward the back door.

All our canisters of wasp poison are empty now, but one lonely outpost remains. Do I get more poison, knock the nest to the ground or live and let live?

These are questions Donald Trump must ponder.

The house is in such disarray that it's hard to keep track of everybody amid the ladders and vacuum cleaners. One afternoon I walked in on DC's mother in the bathroom. Which of us shouted "Oops" louder?

I quickly closed the door and ran downstairs to begin pounding on things again, forgetting that DC's father had removed all the doorknobs to polish them,

A short while later our next-door neighbor John came running to inform us that DC's mother was locked in the upstairs bathroom. She'd been yelling out the window for help for five minutes.

Twice DC and I have summoned reinforcements, free-lance workers who claim to be house renovators. Like a deranged docent, I conducted tours from basement to second floor. They took notes and made suggestions about the good they could do. Some took measurements.

But none ever called back or sent an estimate. We wonder if we should report them missing. Maybe the house discourages them as much as us.

Saturday morning, faced with all that needs to be done, I received a call from a friend I've been trying to play golf with for a year. He was free Saturday afternoon.

A number of friends think I'm wrong not to believe in the devil.

Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian