Digging Up More History At Casa Del Brian

This is the last of my material about "Casa Del Brian" from my visit to Homewood the weekend before last. Hopefully I'll see Casa Del Brian again as it continues to progress, but word is the house will be included on a home tour in the near future.

While visiting, I kind of (sort of) helped Brian dig up more history. See, there was this really big crawl space, with some paperwork laying in plain site. Brian hadn't crawled in there because...

...first of all, he's a busy guy, but also most of the paperwork visible was just endless copies of the Pentecostal Evangel. (It's a weekly publication of the Assemblies of God Church, I believe) There was a big black file cabinet inside the crawl space, laying sideways, but it was missing three of its four drawers.

Now, I'm a very document-oriented person. If that had been my house, I would have been in that crawl space before everything else, sifting through the scattered copies of the church magazines, looking for the smallest papery clue of the history of the house. Brian had been putting off the contents of the crawl space. I was all, like, "Mind if I---?"

Well, I had some pretty good luck going "history fishing." Yes, most of the drawers were missing from the file cabinet, but there was a fairly large remnant of documents spilled out of the bottom drawer into the tipped over cabinet. Most of these things were business papers regarding "Danny and the Brewerettes," the professional gospel singing group which was connected with the previous owner of the property, Vera Brewer, later Vera Jenkins. I even found some kind of baptismal certificate.

The prize find, however, was a dorky gilded bird statue made of ceramic, I think. I'm not sure if it was partially painted or partially gilded. Anyway, it was a pretty cool find and, oddly enough, might actually compliment another bird statue that Brian already has on his mantel.

Or not.

Another thing we found: zinnia flower seeds from 1975. The obvious question is: if you plant 'em, will they grow? Somebody may need to check with Brian later in the spring.

Anyway, it was pretty fun to be invited to Brian's house and participate in a sort of historical treasure hunt.

Last night I was out eating and drinking with Connie Nompelis, Jeff Skrenes, and Megan Goodmundson, and I asked Connie why realtors (REAL-tors, not real-a-tors) don't make more of an effort to gather up a bit of history to go with the houses they sell. Connie basically told me it wasn't cost-effective to put any time into that kind of effort, and historical research on houses was probably going to be--perpetually--the realm of proud new owners, not realtors.

Well, I think it's a pity. Trash out crews arrive at these foreclosed houses and they toss out big boxes of paperwork which would provided hours, days of fun to the next owner of the house. Here's an idea for any trash out crews that might be reading:

Let's suppose you set aside a box, throw potentially historical documents and photos in that box, and then just sort of "forgot" the box in a crawl space? Think how much history you would preserve, think how much fun you would provide to the next owner, with very little cost and effort on your part.

That's what I'd be doing, but then again I'm fairly well-known as a "give-a-damn" kinda guy and, well, a chronic scavenger.

Oh, by the way, Connie Nompelis' last name is pronounced like "Nobeliss." The "mp" combination makes a "b" sound when writing out a Greek name in the English alphabet.

Just thought I'd toss that in there at the end.