My first visit to The Hole was fascinating. My friend Mark Allen lived there with his wife Sue and a couple of their kids. I visited Mark with his brother and my good friend, Scott, who was in all of my industrial design classes (and who now works for Yakima). Mark was out back, working on his Porsche, restoring it from a rusty mess. Blow torch in hand, Mark said "Hey, take a look at this" to which he walked us over to the side of his house, and applied the blue flame to side shingles. The paint flittered away as if being hit with a sandblaster, but surprisingly the house did not burn. He switched off the blow torch and said "put your hand on it - its not hot" and I nervouosly poked at it. The house shingles were asbestos.
At the end of the year (sophmore) Mark informed me that they would be leaving Provo and moving back to Redding, CA, (where he went on to help his dad run the family business, and also started a couple radio and tv stations) and that the house was going to be available. Preston and I talked it over and agreed to take it on for the fall.
The place was kind of a dump -- Mark had rebuilt a car engine on the living room carpet, the plumbing was questionable, and there was 50's wallpaper throughout. But with asbestos exterior and poured plaster walls that did not allow any level of sound to permeate the confines of our living space (not from a lack of trying), we were sold on the idea. Shortly after moving in, I painted a small sign with the name of our house -- "The Hole" -- and placed it against the tree in our front yard. The sign was a constant point of friction with the house owners, who always removed it when visiting (usually to yell at me about late rent) -- but we always found it again and put it back out front.
I remember that house. I lived next door. I used to be a psycho, and tried to win the world championships of Nedball. And I would have gotten away with it if it weren't for those pesky kids and their darn dog!
Posted by: Ned | June 26, 2006 at 10:13 PM