Ch 1: Smitten

I fell in love with a relic of the early 20th century from the moment I saw its picture on realtor.com.  Philip, my partner-in-all-things, did not share my enthusiasm.

The romantic cuteness of a 1908 "shotgun house" has its roots in simplicity, practicality and affordability, all of which were pre-requisites in our search for a part-time abode in Philip's hometown of Pensacola, Florida.  The name "shotgun house" likely arises from a common attribute of the architectural style.  Excerpted from historicpensaecola.org:

"Shotgun House- Long, narrow vernacular style of residence, commonly one room wide and several rooms deep.  The term “shotgun” refers to the layout where one could stand at the front door, fire a shotgun, and the blast would exit the back door without hitting anything in the house.  Alternately, the name could be a corruption of the African word to-gun, which describes a similar type of house."  

Due to their simplicity, practicality and affordability, shotgun homes are not normally found in more "desirable" neighborhoods. Philip's lack of enthusiasm for what was to become the vehicle on our journey of character-building was based largely on its location.  Philip suffered from the myopia of remembered neighborhood characteristics from his youth which, at the time, was over 30 years earlier.  Transitional neighborhoods are one thing; "don't be caught there after dark" neighborhoods are something entirely different!  The corner of Wright and Davis in the extreme hinterlands of the "Old East Hill" historic district was most definitely "the other side of the tracks" in the 1950s.

In the Pensacola of his youth, Philip was astonished by two "very smart" black girls from this very neighborhood who entered his grammar school at the dawn of the integration era; astonished because they helped to free him of the prejudices of ignorance.  Prior to the sweeping social changes ushered in by desegregation, it is unlikely that the three would have ever even met.  Though the entirety of their relationship was confined to just a few pre-teen years together, Philip, now in his 60s, can repeat their names and recall the impact they made on hiim.  Yet, his innate prejudice of the nieghborhood which produced them remained.  To put it plainly (and it pains me to do so), "proper white folks just didn't live there."  Like the impervious and oh-so-common kudzu vine, the tendrils of segregation and prejudice in the South remained and remain pervasive.

To my mind, shotguns were the like "mobile home" of the 19th and early 20th centuries in the South.  Requiring very little space, they were easy and inexpensive to build, often in very high densities (especially in larger coastal cities).  They were crafted of available, durable, inexpensive materials:  southern white and/or yellow pine, "found" stones for foundations and cheap tin for the roof.  Interestingly, while the metal roofs and stone foundations were prone to failure with the ravages of time, the native pine had a tendency to "petrify" over time, rendering it impervious to assault from termites and other destructive forces.  I once attempted to drive a common nail into a supporting member of what beame OUR shotgun, only to be thwarted by the stonelike wood.  Fire seems to have been its sole mortal enemy and took its toll, sadly originating from both natural and man-made, sometimes hate-fueled, sources.

Anyone with the means to "do better" than a shotgun, certainly took pains to do so.  While it was the very essence of the American Dream of home ownership, the shotgun spoke plainly of the limited means of its inhabitants.  Exceptions to the plain single-gable-over-shed-roof-porch are plentiful, some quite artistic.  But the very form and materials used to fabricate it can be summarized in a word:  humble. 

"Humble" is a word that generations of Americans from the very beginnings of our nation have embraced, even venerated.  Around the world, humility became known as the oxymoronic quality of our people, juxtaposed against the greatness of our nation.  But humility seems to have somehow fallen from grace.  It has become the grist in the mill of more recent generations of Americans' "need" for bigger, grander, richer, better.  So, the accomplishment of home ownership represented by this modest home paled in the light of its relative humility.  The need for some to "rank" on others put the shotgun and its inhabitants "in their place".  

Even to one of the most accepting, loving, fair-minded humans I know, my partner Philip, the shotgun at 317 N. Davis was going to be one HELL of a hard-sell.

But the very obvious shortcomings of the shotgun house can also be the foundation of its allure:  simplicity, humility, affordability, security, practicality, accomplishment, community, pride.  Moreover, these homes epitomize a value which has become alien in the culture of our country:  personal responsibility.  "Living within one's means", akin to humility, is another typically American value that has become quaint, unnecessary, outdated, borderline eccentric.  In 21st century America, it is not only possible to acquire things which one can never hope to pay for, it is almost de rigueur to do so.

I was smitten by cute, sold on practicality, and destined to learn one of life's valuable lessons thanks to the realities of a free-market economy.  The shotgun house was for us, not just a home-away-from-home, it became the crucible of our morality and ethics; OUR morality and ethics.  Philip and I have always seen ourselves as two complete entities, one unique from the other.  But over the years, our partnership has grown almost into an entity of its own.  OUR mettle was to be tested, as was his, as was mine.  The funny thing about crucibles is that they test mettle to the point of failure or to the point where the product is superior to the simple combination of its components.