ROSS MURRAY

'That' old house

STANSTEAD, QC | We're running out of time to get the house painted. The decent weekends, scarce to begin with, are dwindling faster than Stéphan Dion's election chances.

We've been at it since August -- a late start, I admit, but there was a lot going on in the early summer. I can't remember what exactly but I'm sure we were busy.

Then there was the matter of what colour to choose. We kept talking about taupe. The problem is no one really knows what taupe is. It's actually just a word people throw out to make it seem like they know something about colour.

In the end, we settled on jean jacket blue and some kind of sandy brown. A bit tope-ish, in fact. It's an improvement over the previous colour: forest green and peel-ish.

For example, there was this huge patch of bare wood right by the front door, caused partly by water damage, partly by children unable to resist picking at it every time they walked by.

The crumbling paint had me concerned that we were becoming that house. You know: "that" house. Every neighbourhood has "that" house, the one the other neighbours complain about.

When I was little, "that" house was four up from mine. Let's call the family the Furllies. The house was dark, unkempt, and forbidding. So were the parents.

Mr. Furllie operated some sort of bottle redemption business out of his garage. You know the final warehouse scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark? In my memory, that's what the garage looked like, except instead of crates of mystical relics there were crates of stubbies.

To make neighbourly relations worse, one day the brakes on Mr. Furllie's truck let go and it rolled down the street right into our maple tree. The nerve!

We were discouraged from playing with the Furllie children. I remember the younger sister had webbed toes. So of course we played with themÉ

Then one day they just disappeared (or so it seemed to me). Eventually, someone else bought the house and spruced it up, and the neighbourhood breathed a sigh of relief.

As a homeowner, I often think of the Furllies and how easy it is to become "that" house.

But it takes more than peeling paint.

There's the lawn, of course. The easy thing to do is to let it grow long enough to provide camouflage for small-to-medium-sized pets. But if you're really committed, you grind your lawn into oblivion.

Toys are also helpful. It's important to leave skateboards, dolls, bubble wands, and various bicycle parts lying around. You can actually accomplish a lot just by leaving out two basketballs. This may not seem like much but basketballs are notorious breeders. In no time at all you'll have a whole driveway full of them.

Dogs are good, and not just because they bark. Our late Rosie was a superior hole digger so we made sure we chained her up in the front yard instead of the back. She also chewed as many branches as she could reach and digest off our corner cedar. And finally, two words: snow droppings.

If you want that torn-screen look that'll get the neighbours shaking their heads, be sure to have lots of cats.

Stinky compost, burning garbage, kids with no pants on -- there are so many ways to become "that" house if you just make an effort. Or if you don't make an effort -- that works as well. Even painting the house can contribute if you take as long to paint it as I do. Last time we painted, it took us three years.

"Which house?"

"The one that's partly blue and brown, partly green and peel-ish."

"Ohhhh, 'that' house."