Gratitude in the Gulag

Marshall Sashkin

We moved to Germantown Tennessee in 2004, hoping to find greater support for Molly’s progressing Parkinson’s disease in the presence of the family and friends she had grown up with. We spent more than half a year living in an apartment. Houses close to friends and family, in good condition and in our price range, were hard to find. So we felt lucky to finally locate a house in a small condo community. Not a typical condo but a real, separate little house, right in the middle of a square of house-like condos that were physically connected. The young occupants had lived there for a few years and were ready to move on to a larger place in a neighborhood of standard family homes. The condo price was reasonable and we settled quickly, eager to quit apartment life and begin “householding” again. But we had never owned a condo.

We were soon introduced to the “Board,” consisting of five or six of our neighbors who had been elected to manage the association. It eventually became clear that a primary aim of the board members was to minimize costs — and thus limit the monthly condo fee. There was a search every year for a better price on grounds care, a cheaper company to do tree trimming, or a more responsive and less costly termite control firm. But another, only slightly less significant, reason that individuals were willing to serve on the board was to satisfy their desire for personal control. And the Board Chairman ran things like a stereotypical small-town Southern sheriff. Not like Andy Griffith in Mayberry, or the incompetent one played by Jackie Gleason that Bert Reynolds was always outsmarting in Smokey and the Bandit. He was more like the small-town Southern sheriff you don’t want to see flashing his light behind you on a dark night.

The most striking example of this need for control was when, in the early years of our experience as condo residents, we saw that the magnolia tree in the front yard had a limb and branches that extended into our little fenced garden/patio area. The lawn outside was, technically, not “ours”. It was considered “common grounds,” which meant that maintenance — cutting grass, trimming trees, and sweeping up fallen leaves — was the responsibility of the association. But as for the leaves that were constantly falling into our private area, we had to pick them up. When Molly one day approached the magnolia tree with clippers, about to trim some of the small overhanging branches, a neighbor who was the board member responsible for grounds maintenance ran up to her shouting,

“Stop! Don’t cut that, the trees are part of our grounds plan!”

Molly, who was not easily bullied, was shocked. She turned to this screeching harridan to explain the problem, only to have this verbal assault continue. The woman’s level of irrationality was such that Molly opted to simply smile and withdraw, a sensible choice.

Later, after Molly explained to me what had happened, I simply went out with a small saw and cut off the offending limb. Soon this same “director of grounds” confronted Molly, shouting,

“You’ve mutilated the magnolia!”

Fortunately, there was no action the grounds director could take, other than expressing outrage. But from then on Molly referred to our community as the “magnolia gulag,” feeling as though we were now living in Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago with every minor action requiring review by a “commissar in charge”.

To commemorate the event, we purchased a small cast concrete gargoyle — the sort you see as drain spouts on medieval church roofs. He was seating cross-legged with his hands covering his face. We nestled the gargoyle beside the entrance our home, at the front door, with a little sign around his neck that Molly had printed. In the manner of Virgil, guiding Dante into the first circle of hades, our gargoyle greeted visitors with this motto:

“Welcome to the Magnolia Gulag!”

Over the fourteen years we lived there relations among neighbors improved. I think that one reason for this was hiring a management firm to take over all the operations of the condominium association. There was some hesitancy, even though the builder had, years ago, strongly advised hiring professional management. However, the desire of the original residents for control of costs, as well as for personal, “hands-on” control, had led residents to ignore that advice for more than twenty years. But, finally, potential firms were interviewed and one was selected. The firm was headed by partners who had started out with and become top managers with a national (and well-regarded) motel chain. They told us that their organization would, each year, save the association more than their annual fee. I was skeptical but, to my pleasant surprise, their claim proved true. The interactions between and among residents may have become more friendly because there were fewer arguments over how to minimize expenses.

That wasn’t the only reason the neighbors became more “neighborly”. Many of the residents who were board members when we moved in had “aged out” into retirement homes (or the grave), eventually including the “grounds commissar”. There were only twenty-four units in all; over the years younger residents moved in and came to be board members — at one point even I was elected to the board! These (comparatively) younger residents didn’t seem as concerned with personal control over how to manage the property. The absence of “commissars” probably helped develop a general sense of being friendly neighbors. There weren’t any complaints when one resident planted a new tree on her front lawn and another had turf put in on his lawn to cover (and hopefully take hold over) persistent bare spots. The management company had “our” magnolia’s limbs trimmed where they hung over the patio fence and onto the roof.

Over the following years we planted flowers and bushes around the outside of our home, throughout the areas that were technically common property, as well as in our own little patio garden. Together, Molly and I grew azaleas, irises, and even planted, next to the house but in the “common” area, a small Japanese Maple. There were no complaints.

It was quite a while after our shocking introduction to condo living that Molly gave me a little card, inside of which she had printed (using the computer I’m typing on now) the following message: