The Beale Street Beat

Their brief visit to Turner Hill that morning started typically enough. The male of the couple stepped onto the porch first…this being new and unfamiliar territory for them both-I hadn’t been expecting them. The young female enthusiastically following in his steps, the area having been cleared of danger by his simply continuing to move forward, wordless…save for the occasional throat noise-its particular placement on the musical scale reflecting his take on things as they went. He walked on, looking tough, looking sharp, looking all-the-things as one must do. But also attentively listening, both for their very survival and for her very up-to-date examination of the things they currently saw/had seen/would see, etc. But in a language yet foreign to me. Her voice was pleasant, and they seemed very happy about all of it. If this arrangement is how they chose to move about the world at large, who was I to judge? He moved with the spryness of youth, his fiery red head catching the sun as he rounded the porch corner and, via his body language to her (walking), declared it safe for her continued footsteps and critique. She darted along behind him, despite her delicate frame and timid nature, her eyes shone with plenty of vigor. Their mission that morning was simple…and might I say one that we encounter quite often here at Turner Hill Properties (and are most certainly qualified/licensed/certified/what-have-you to handle under most circumstances): Shelter. He had checked at least a few of Maslow’s boxes that I could see, and found his way up to Beale Street in pursuit of yet another. How many could he have left? At this point, I typically stand up from my desk and introduce myself through the front door that’s usually open, and find out. That’s when things really started to deviate from the typical visit to Turner Hill. Just as I stood up from my desk, she started jumping. Up and down with her feet together, right there on the porch! Then, before she even started to explain why she was doing this on clearly safe ground (which she would eventually do, in detail, to him, in a language I still didn’t know), he started doing it too! So, I did what any reasonable real estate broker would do, I sat back down at my desk, and continued working. I wasn’t in the mood! I had a listing to write, contracts to initial, people to call…all the things they told me that I should expect in broker school to worry about. She would bounce, he would bounce. She’d move left and do it again, and so would he, then to the right a bit, and so on. I typed away and tried to ignore them through the window as they successfully were somehow doing to me. Then, out of nowhere, they left. Poof! Gone! They were only there for about a minute total, and there for a second they had stopped the jumping, and I expected at least him to come to the threshold and explain to me in some fashion, what exactly whoever had built the place, or the porch, or the subdivision, or the town had done wrong. Then I could explain to him that this place had been here almost 80 years, on this beautiful vantage point overlooking the majestic Hualapai Mountains and historic Downtown, and just in my time here in town, 30 or so years, I had witnessed some pretty impressive storms and other shocking events of Mother Nature, so neither Her nor Father Time had yet to declare victory on this old 1943 house, it was fused together, each tight-grained beam of her structure, and to the Earth itself by the pride, and sheer grit of a bygone generation, and that sort of thing. But you know, I was having a bad day, so it’s probably for the best. That would have been a terrible way to handle it. Just blabbing at the door about things nobody really cares to hear. ‘Be friendly and listen’ would have been the best method, had he advanced to the threshold, regardless of his complaint, I thought. That’s what a mature, thoughtful, licensed/qualified/etc. broker should do, and that’s what I should do moving forward. Now it set in. In the calmness of the breeze and the cars jamming down Old Sixty-Six out the open door, I wondered where they had went and so fast? I had assumed they were looking for a new place…but what if I had been wrong? Maybe they didn’t want a place at all? What if they were just checking out the view? I wasn’t rude or anything, I just paid them the same attention they had paid me: none at all. I did what any obsolete man of my generation would do under the circumstances, I told myself. There at my desk. Now not working at all. Just gazing out the window, wondering. Assuming. What if they weren’t even a couple at all? How did I know it was a male who had appeared first, his red head gleaming? What if I had been mistaken? My 5^th grade daughter would have, with carefully placed ‘how do you know that’s?’ flung in my direction, had she not been at school during this event, revealed that just because I was born in the 1900s, maybe I assume I know things that I in fact, do not. Just as my wife teaches me everything can’t be fixed by using a wrench, or hitting it with a hammer, or saying nice things, or painting it a flashy color, etc. I had to perceive this from all angles, I thought, in my obsolete caveman brain somehow. The event had unfolded starting at the corner of my left eye, how much had I thought I saw but didn’t actually see before turning my head? Hell…what if they didn’t even exist at all? Recapitulating the series of events on which I had witnessed unfold before me in order to type all of this crap...I had stood up, looked at him, he looked at me (this all through the window), I looked at her, she looked at me, he looks at the view, she looks at him and starts jumping. I had certainly moved my glance to first capture the gleaming red atop his head in the morning sun, then the glances were exchanged as I stood up, then I simply sat back down and got back to diligently checking off things on my own personal Maslow list when things got weird. They did exist, I was certain of it. But I decided to leave it at that. Enough window time, I thought. Back to the list! No time to waste! Then, out of nowhere, SMACK! A male red headed House Finch slammed at full speed into the front office window. I jumped with shock, and watched as he clumsily found his way to the porch rail, and stood wobbling for the next minute or so. Though I hadn’t seen where they had gone, the couple had taken refuge in the Ash tree just in front of the office, and as he collected his bearings on where he was physically, and probably on his checklist as hard as he hit, she chirped from the Ash tree about what he was able to find out about the property line on their perspective new place, as I sat back and felt good about being right about something.