Single home versus duplex

OUR NEIGHBOR ACROSS the street sold his house and moved to the country. It's a beautiful old German home with new siding and a lot of character.

He sold the house to a local contractor with a decent reputation. But the contractor apparently wants to take a stately single-family home and turn it into a two-family duplex, and the flags immediately go up.

The two houses to our west are both divided. The one right next to us is OK (and I know one of the tenants will be reading this with great interest). The other is iffy. The rest of the block is single-family.

The landlord business is tough - we go through it on a commercial level at Fifth and Maine. Decent landlords are hard to find around here and decent home renters can be a challenge to find as well.

Twelve years ago I moved into the top of a house at 9th and Monroe that had three units. The landord, Bob Pribble, was excellent and I never had issues with the other tenants. So it can work out, if people actually give a crap.

Our house in our quiet old neighborhood

My fear is that this beautiful house across the street will go downhill if two renters get in there who don't care about the property. A family that buys the home and lives in it would be a lot more likely to put the time and effort needed to keep up an older home.

We have four houses within a stone's throw empty right now. Two of them are in foreclosure with no relief is site, and have become nasty eyesores.

Geesh. Why don't people care about where they live, or properties they own?

I offer no solutions. But you can bet I'm keeping a close eye on the house across the street, and ultimately the new tenants. We hope the new owner/landlord will care about our little neighborhood as much as we do.

Remembering the good Gus stuff

THE OLDER WE get, the longer it takes to recover from another fantastic Gus Macker weekend. I think I slept for 11 hours last night .... Geesh.

As event manager for the national staff, my job is to basically deal with 2 percent of the people who cause 99 percent of the problems. Sure, I had my hands full a few times. But that stuff doesn't bother me - people are idiots no matter where you go and you just deal with it and move on. By the way, Washington Park looked amazing Sunday night after the Quincy Notre Dame football team came through and cleaned it up, like they do every year.

I choose to remember the good times and the many people who had a blast. And I always have one memory stick out.

This year it happened on Sunday afternoon at about 2 p.m. The Quincy Notre Dame girls soccer team won a state championship the night before, so they got the traditional firetruck ride through downtown. We stopped all our games on Maine Street and let the parade go through and gave them some major Macker and Quincy love.

Photo by Lisa Smith on facebook
Caption: Gus Macker champions....... again — with Anthony Fairlee, Donovan Prost and Jirehl Brock.

On the court near Fifth and Maine, Jirehl Brock and his team were playing in the championship game. Jirehl is going to be a junior at Quincy High School this fall. He is an amazing athlete - I had to politely tell him to quit dunking so he wouldn't bend the rim. And what a great kid, him and his three teammates. Their games drew big crowds and were a joy to watch.

So the QND girls rolled by his court, and sure enough, Jirehl and his teammates stood up and gave them a standing ovation, and everybody else around the court did, too.

My daughter was a QHS Blue Devil and I experienced the QND-QHS rivalry firsthand, and it is pretty intense. So I got goosebumps when seeing athletes from one school saluting another.

There's hope in this world after all, you know?

See you in the park this Macker weekend

SO WE KNOW it's about Gus Macker time when Noah Williams rolls into town.

Noah is the national staff foreman. He puts all the baskets together, makes sure the courts are ready (the Exchange Club of Quincy tapes them the week before we start) and gets everything off the truck. Noah is one of the best and one of many hard-working Macker national staff members who make things work and keep things moving during a hectic weekend.

I am proud to be the Event Manager for the national staff for the second straight year. This means overseeing the brackets and registration areas and putting out fires - I love Gus, challenges and logistics included. The previous 18 Quincy Macker tournaments I volunteered as an official and Dream Court organizer. I am also working for four other Gus Mackers in three states this summer.

This is the 27th year for Quincy's Gus Macker, a tribute and testament to the Quincy Exchange Club. They are the reason we are still going strong here.

I am not blind to the challenges this tournament puts on our downtown area, and I am sympathetic to the plight of businesses. We are right in the thick of it.

But Sheryl and I love Gus Macker, and we choose to embrace it and make it the best weekend we can. I am proud of our tournament and proud to say I am from Quincy when I travel to other tournaments in the Midwest.

So ... if you need to find me this weekend, starting at about 2 p.m. Friday .... come on over to Washington Park. I'll be wandering around somewhere!

Believe in yourself

WE JUST SOLD a microphone with a USB connector to a young man who wants to record songs on his laptop. He said, "I don't mean to brag or nothing, but I don't suck."

I don't know the young man. I've never heard him sing, or rap, or whatever it is he does. But you know what? He's all fired up and he is chasing his passion and dreams. Good for him! Second String Music is proud to help and we hope he makes it to the big time.

Sheryl and I have learned you can't judge a book by its cover. We are about supporting our local musicians, no matter what kind of music they play. Who knows? Maybe this young man will go on and be a big star and rule the world.

If so, we are proud to say we helped him along the way.

Tiny House Hungers equals huge GUH

TODAY'S BIG HUGE rant is about something tiny. As in, Tiny House Hunters. As in, Sheryl is addicted to HGTV and when she gets tired of 10-person political panels on CNN, she flips it over to HGTV to watch a bunch of home improvements shows.

There's Property Brothers, Beachfront Bargains, Flip or Flop Vegas, and many different versions of House Hunters. The best show was when a poor family in Calftown tried to teach the father to overcome his allergies to power tools and drywall. Wait. That was real and called "Homeowners In The Hood" and it had record ratings.

But .... IT'S SO TINY.

The most ludicrous show, and they are all a bit ludicrous, is called Tiny House Hunters. This features people downsizing and tired of paying huge rent and mortgage payments. So they move into a closet, or something slightly bigger. The first one I watched featured a woman bellowing "IT'S SO TINY" every time she walked into a room. Actually, there was only one room. Good grief, where is she going to put her shoes? Hello! It's TINY HOUSE HUNTERS! The only thing more obnoxious is a person who types in all caps.

Last night's Tiny House Hunters featured a married couple from West Virginia. They moved into the woods and built their own tiny house. The woman has a good job and the man is a full-time musician. That's code for "stay at home husband" or "broke music store owner." But I digress.

The couple used musical instruments to make fixtures and the guy built a stage on the back of the house for his band. They didn't have running water or electricity during construction, though I seem to remember power tools being used - plugged into a generator or a big gerbil running around a turbine wheel generator, I suspect.

It was mesmerizing and I almost burned dinner on the grill, it was so interesting. Then they decided to get all their water from a nearby stream. The guy even tested it to make sure it was clean. It was never explained how their tiny bathroom got tiny water dribbles out of the tiny faucets and shower heads, or where the tiny toilet flushing went, but hey, it's a half hour show and the band played at the housewarming party, which is way more important than water supply and where the electricity comes from. Sheryl said, "That was a $25,000 ad for the band. It was a business expense."

So there it is, our new Monday night cable TV show. Tiny is the new big and big is just a state of mind. If tiny is your style, so be it and good for you - Sheryl and I are happy with our big old German Calftown Hart Manor. We do not think we could live in a space the size of our tiny kitchen.

Hmmm. Now that could be a not Tiny show. Fixing up Hart Manor in Calftown with the irritating Twinsy dudes from Canada?

Back the (dancing) Blue!

VANCIL PERFORMING ARTS had its annual recital Saturday and Sunday at the Morrison Theater inside Quincy Junior High School. Congrats to Cindy, her teachers and all the students for another great year.

The start the recital, several members of our local law enforcement agencies were invited to participate in a dance number. The response was tremendous and it looked like our boys and girls in blue had a lot of fun. Particularly graceful was Quincy Police Sgt. Adam Yates of Pepper Spray and Prospect Road fame - if you've ever seen him boogie to "Ice Ice Baby," you know what I mean.

Cindy and Frank have made Back The Blue a priority and have done a lot of good stuff to raise money and morale. We have another huge event coming up July 8 at Washington Park in downtown Quincy, so stay tuned - it will be epic.

And you might just see a few more dancing officers.