“I’ll divorce your father if you live here.”
I’m not sure if my mother was serious when she made that threat, but as she sat there crying on the porch of my would-be home, I didn’t feel the need to test it.
With junior year fast approaching, seven friends and I made the bold decision to go in on a house together somewhere in the Fort Sanders neighborhood. As anyone who’s been at UT for more than a year can attest, Fort Sanders is the ideal party location. Not far enough away from campus to be inconvenient, but close enough to serve as a hub for all things alcohol and heinous, it seemed the natural selection for any college student seeking the ideal ‘Saturday night’ home. Like many UT students, the first year of my college career was served in a freshman dorm, and even when your RA is cool, you’re ultimately subject to somebody else’s rules.
What a house in Fort Sanders offers, or at least I thought at the time, was a freedom that no residence hall or apartment complex could offer. The Valhalla of housing, waiting to be taken.
Sadly, it wasn’t meant to be. After a short and rushed shopping spree through the Fort, we settled on a house at the corner of 17th and Clinch. Rather than focusing on the house’s glaring flaws (the pile of plywood and nails in the backyard should have raised some red flags) we decided instead to marvel at the shed in the back of the house and the endless number of things we could do with it.
Sadly, the move-in day we had all waited for never really came. Our group of eight co-leasers dwindled to a faithful two after the parents of my would-be-roommates saw the house with their own eyes. Apparently, exposed wires, moldy ceilings and “unsafe living conditions” don’t exactly vibe with every parent, yet my friend and I were still committed to toughing it out and living in the basement (our only option, seeing as the other two floors were under constant renovation).
What happened next you can probably guess. My mother saw the war zone that was to be my house and had a mental breakdown on my front porch, and so I settled for a three bedroom Fort apartment to myself. Eventually, I did get the Fort party house I’d desired — only with less parties and more reality. When you live in a house that’s older than your grandparents and with five other guys, you realize a few immutable facts: old houses don’t have terrible insulation, mold grows on dishes you don’t wash for months and firecrackers at 4 a.m. make for a terrible alarm. Too old to party on the scale that sophomore me had imagined, I settled into the party house I had always wanted — just without any of the parties.
To those of you house shopping in jolly old Fort Sanders, there are several things you must keep in mind — the most important of which is practicality. The house you choose will be yours not just on Saturday night, but all the other nights and days as well. Parties are fun, but they always end, and your guests can’t be counted on to clean the puke out of your sink once the sun finally comes up.
