Chapter 96: Going Underground

Saturday, March 10, 1984

The morning paper showed that the Memorial guys had beaten San Antonio Fox Tech for a spot in the finals. I didn’t think they’d made the finals in my first go-round, but I might have missed it. Angie thought they had, and then had lost by some large margin.

Ironically for us, they were playing Bryan for the championship. We’d be living right next to Bryan in just a few months but, for now, they were definitely the ‘bad guys.’

We discussed driving up to Austin for the finals, but we really wanted to spend the day with Mom and Dad. Besides that, it looked like we might not be able to get there in time, and it’d be an extra trip to Austin, since we couldn’t reasonably handle things with Michael this time, even if he was available. We’d see how it came out in tomorrow’s paper, and that was soon enough.

Instead, we helped Mom cook lunch, helped Dad get through the mail that had piled up (Mom and Dad were already on far too many charities’ mailing lists!), and just hung out with them in general. It was obvious that’s what we were trying to do, but that was fine. They appreciated that we were making a conscious decision to hang out with them.

Sunday, March 11, 1984

I checked the morning paper. Memorial beat Bryan by fifteen for the state championship in boys basketball. That was two state championships in one year. The school board might be preparing to canonize Principal Riggs at this point.

Calvin wasn’t the leading scorer, or the MVP — Andy Gilchrist, a junior, was — but he’d come close, and had picked up a bunch of rebounds as well. I vaguely remembered Andy (who I really didn’t know) having a solid college career.

Calvin would be letting everyone know where he was going soon enough. I knew he had offers. It’d be awesome to see him do well.

We went to church as usual on Sunday. It’d been nearly a month since we’d been, and I missed it. So did Angie. Just getting to listen to Dr. Ott and participate in the familiar rituals mattered to us, perhaps more than I’d ever thought it would.

Once I’d left home, it’d been decades before I regularly attended church again. That wouldn’t be the case this time. Unitarian, liberal Christian, or whatever, we’d find somewhere that we could belong.

As good as sleeping in on Sunday was (and it was good!), so was having good habits. A church that emphasized things we could agree with would be a good thing for us.

Dad took us to the Warwick’s brunch, which made everyone happy. We talked about nearly everything the whole time. Neither Dad nor Mom had even known that Memorial was doing well in basketball, and were amazed that we had another state championship. They joked with us about the two of us possibly adding a couple more. That was possible, of course, though most people wouldn’t equate Debate or Drama with football or basketball.

They had, of course, noticed that all of our friends were doing extremely well. I don’t think they necessarily thought we deserved credit, but they certainly knew we had a hand in it, and were happy about that.

After lunch, we talked about seeing a movie, something we hadn’t done in a long time. Despite some skepticism, we convinced them that they would probably enjoy ‘Footloose’, which Dad, in particular, thought sounded a bit silly.

After the movie, he declared it a great movie and said he was wrong to doubt us. He and Mom talked a fair bit on the drive back about how it mirrored things they’d seen growing up, and how they knew pastors like the one in the movie. Doctor Ott wouldn’t have taken that line, certainly, but some of his colleagues would have — if not about dancing and rock’n’roll, then about something else.

Just another little nudge in what we considered ‘the right direction.’ There was, of course, a fine line there. I knew who they’d been at the time they died, though, and opening up their minds a bit more now wouldn’t make them any more ‘liberal’ than they’d been then. Not that they’d been ‘liberal,’ but they’d both found themselves to be more open-minded than they’d once thought. We’d sped that up, but that was pretty much it.

After the movie, Angie and I went out in pursuit of what might be the last big round of sports bets in Houston. Local bookies were offering 5-1 on Georgetown, who I was nearly certain was going to win this year. That was better than you’d get in most places, but local betting was heavily on Houston (thanks to the feeling around town that Houston’s loss last year was a fluke and they were going to surely win this year), and — as is usual — the bookies were trying to balance bets across the teams. Georgetown was a favorite, based on their record, but few people around here were betting on them.

Their loss, my gain.

I used the same sequence of bookies as before, betting $25,000 in total. If all worked out well, we’d have the capital to buy another house (perhaps two, with some infusions from elsewhere) and/or put even more into our own house.

I also placed a few side bets. Betting on Houston to make the Final Four didn’t return much, but it was practically a sure thing. The same was true of many of the others. Some were intended to be losers, but losers that would look good to the bookies.

I might place a second round of bets on the Final Four itself. By that point, I expected no better than 5-2 on Georgetown (perhaps even 3-2), but even that might be worthwhile.

My lawyer was going to just have to be mad at me. I wasn’t even going to mention it to Kyle until much later this year, though. No point, and he’d hopefully have other concerns by that point.

When we got home, Angie and I called Jas and Paige. They’d enjoyed the weekend, too, but were eager to head to College Station tomorrow. Apparently, they’d spent a fair bit of their free time looking at wallpaper and paint.

It was probably good for our sanity that this process would take a while. We could make plans this weekend, but very few of them could be implemented. We might be able to get an improved sump system set up, but that was about it. The rotted floorboards would wait. It’d be much too disruptive to the tenants to fix them.

As for the mold, they could spray mold-killer in some places, which would at least help. Probably. Hopefully. None of us were all that mold-sensitive, but it was still probably better to get started on remediation.

Angie slept in her room again tonight, and we both went to bed relatively early.

Monday, March 12, 1984

Angie and I decided to help Mom with her shopping, just to spend more time together, so we delayed our departure until just after lunch. Even with that, we made it to College Station around three.

I’d called Brazos Foundation before we left, setting a meeting for three-thirty at the house. Being the owners now, we had a key to the house, and simply let ourselves in after making sure the tenants weren’t at home. Jasmine and Paige immediately set to taking pictures all over the house, while Angie and I followed them and took notes. They quickly switched from taking pictures to taking measurements of everything and calling them out. By the time they were done, we had a fairly accurate set of measurements for the first and second floors and the attic. Not perfect, but we knew what we were working with, pretty much.

We’d gotten a set of plans for the house at closing, but the plans didn’t match the changes that had been made. We’d likely need an architect to draw up new plans, though who knew? The important thing would be to make sure that our contractors followed code and obtained the proper permits. We hardly needed a big fight with city officials.

A pickup with ‘Brazos Foundation’ on the door, and equipment and storage in the back, rolled up just a few minutes early. The guy that got out was likely in his fifties. He was tall, looked strong, and was balding.

We met him at the door.

“Paul Finley,” he said. “Pleasure to meet you, Mister Marshall.”

“Steve,” I said, smiling. “Mr. Marshall is my dad.”

He chuckled.

Angie, Jasmine, and Paige introduced themselves as well.

“So, Maxine Fletcher tells me you’ve got basement issues. Not much of a surprise,” he said. “No one knows how to do basements properly here!”

“I’ve never seen one!” Paige said. “Not in a house, anyway!”

“Ours was nice, though we mostly used it for storage,” Angie said. “In Chicago, I mean.”

“You’re from Chicago?” Paul said, sounding surprised.

I was pretty sure Angie had put that out there specifically to get that reaction.

Angie nodded. “Skokie, actually, until I was thirteen. I moved down to Houston in 1980. Long story.”

“I miss the snow,” Paul said. “I also don’t miss the snow at all!”

Angie chuckled. “Me, too!”

“Show me your problem,” he said.

We led him to the basement door. He opened it, then looked down, then sniffed.

“Maxine underestimated this!” he said. “Or, really, I underestimated it. Whoever’s staying here must be blasting this with Lysol about once a week.”

“I have no idea,” I said, “but I can find out.”

“I can smell it,” he said. “Mildew and Lysol. It’s a really classic smell.”

“Just smells yucky to me,” Paige said.

We all went down into the basement. As it was right now, it had bare wooden stairs (at least they had handrails!), a concrete slab and walls (with some obvious water stains in various places), small windows set high along the walls, and several support pillars. There were a few wooden benches along the walls (it had obviously been used as a workroom at some point) and several bare light bulbs in fixtures on the ceiling. There was an obvious sump in one corner of the basement, and a somewhat more discolored piece of concrete along one wall not far from the sump. The ceiling was unfinished; besides the exposed fixtures, we could see the underside of most of the first-floor plumbing.

The ceiling also showed some obvious signs of patching in a few areas. Boards didn’t match; that sort of thing.

Paul went over, opened the sump, and looked up. “Pump’s undersized, but that’s the least of your problems.”

“Let us have it,” I said.

He clicked his tongue once, then said, “Well, first, someone plugged up an old exterior entry right there.” He pointed to the discolored piece. “Most likely that’s thin concrete in front of soil fill. You’d be better off replacing that. That’ll leak, that will. I’m guessing there was a furnace or boiler down here. Someone took it out and sealed up the coal chute. Decades ago, looks like.”

“Interesting,” Jas said.

“Now, the windows are leaking, but we can mostly fix that,” he said. “That’ll take some exterior sealing and landscaping. Next, the concrete in here is old and seeping. That’s normal, and we can address that with sealant. Do all of that, and replace the sump pump, and you’ll get rid of the smell and get a dry storage space, or paint the walls to get an entertaining area.”

“I’m hearing a ‘but’ in there.”

He chuckled. “I’d strongly advise against painting the walls. Paint and sealant don’t get along, which means you’d be stripping the paint on a regular basis. You’d do better putting in paneling. Easy enough to remove, and even if it goes bad, it’s not too hard to replace. But, if it was me, I’d just fix it once and for all. That’s more money, though.”

“Walk us through it?” Angie said.

He pointed to the base of the concrete. “You can do this one of two ways. Almost all of the water coming in here is coming in from the sides, so you could run a drain pipe on top of the existing concrete. You have to completely fill the area and add a rim. That’ll take up several inches around the entire basement. Then build walls, drywall it, the works, just like you were building upstairs. The water is contained no matter what. Now, if this was new construction, or you just wanted to do it completely right, we’d put the drain in below the concrete level. That means jackhammering up the concrete around the edges, putting in the drain, and redoing the concrete. The advantage is that you need less clearance, so you lose less space. Also, your sump is inadequate. To expand it, you’ll need to jackhammer anyway. Not nearly as much, but getting set up is half the battle.”