No deposit, no return

When I landed in Georgia, I had $200 cash, an old riotgun, and a shiny new pistol.

Something was going to break my way, but that's the subject of another story.

This one is about the first place I ever rented in Georgia.

Rural Georgia is not a renter's paradise. Having few resources and a limited amount of time, I rented a small 2 bedroom trailer in a little dirt-road shithole of a park off of GA 300.

Cue Ugly Kid Joe's "Neighbor".

And so I moved in with my girlfriend, who was working as a stripper (much to her exes displeasure), and her 3 tricycle motors.

We were just the talk of the trailer park. It was a torrid little dump of a tornado magnet, ran by an old prune whose husband had left it to her, and a crotchety lazy old cracker who pretended to be the maintenance man in exchange for free lot rent, and his wife who lived on the other side of the park from him in a different trailer.

It was....temporary housing.

But we both worked and we worked hard and eventually the time came to move on to nicer quarters.

We had even gotten along amicably with the people in the park up until now. The rent was paid, a month's notice of departure was given, and everything should have been just fine...

but there was a little snag.

The old prune that ran the place had nitpicked and nitpicked us to death while we lived there. I think alot of it had to do with us not sending our kids to her church for proper religious indoctrination.

We sent them to the one they wanted to go to with their friends instead.

How terrible. I think Baptists just don't care much for Pentecostals. The kids didn't care much. The Pentacostals had more fun. And we got a break from them after Saturday night.

But hey, life in the trailer park trying to scrape out a living, right?

Come the weekend of the move-out, the snag was my security deposit. The lady said she just never returned it. Never. No way.

Now I had taken good care of this place for about 8 months. I even rebuilt the bathroom floor, replaced a floor beam, and installed a new cradle, sewer line, tub, linoleum, and trim in her old trailer when the rickety old maintenance man suddenly had an asthma attack and had to be on oxygen for two weeks the moment real work had to be done.

I was going to hand this place back to the old bat in better shape than I found it. She had already gotten my labor for free so I could have a bathroom the month before.

Well I called everyone I could think of trying to find a way to make her return my $100.

Yeah. A hundred bucks.

But there is no cop on the beat for a dried-up, old nag of a landlady who just won't do right.

Incorrigible is as incorrigible does.

I went to her one last time. I let her know I was going to throw a party the night before I moved out. I invited her. Told her we were going to have a housewrecking good time.

Or she could give me my money. $100. It'll prevent a thousand worth of damage lady.

She promised to call the cops.

I offered one final time to not cause trouble, and to clean the place immaculately. I really needed that $100 to get ahead of my bills while moving.

So we had a bash.

The cops came of course. We offered them beer. Demonstrated that we were well within our rights.

The second time they came they told the bizatch not to call them again unless someone was getting murdered or she was going to jail.

Partay time!

I don't have to tell you what the aftermath was like. We didn't damage her property in any way, but we didn't clean up behind ourselves either, if you know what I mean.

I got my $100 worth. And nobody cleaned it up Sunday.

Monday morning I happened to be having breakfast at the little ptomaine shack across the highway from the cesspool when I saw the car from county code enforcement show up a few minutes after nine.

I had made a few phone calls Friday afternoon, about 4 o'clock.

Before I could finish a second cup of hot cocoa, a car had arrived from the tax assessor's office as well, and a pickup truck from animal control. While all of these people were in the old bat's front yard waiting for a chance to talk with her, the health department arrived.

Months later I drove through the trailer park in my hippie van that they didn't recognize and went to see an old neighbor. The roads in the park were paved. They had newly installed city water...the old well was found to be contaminated. The mangy animals were all gone, the septic tanks were properly capped with concrete instead of plywood and a few inches of dirt, and all of the trailers had current registration stickers on them.

My friend told me that the entire trailer park knew that not returning my deposit had cost this woman almost $95,000.

He also said I probably shouldn't let her catch me there.

Now why would she feel like that I wonder?