We took at trip to Savannah, Georgia this past weekend. I have always loved Savannah. We visited over a decade ago, and it has remained one of my favorites of the places we’ve visited. This time, of course, with a few more years of experience and my initiation into HOA Hell, I saw it with even more layers of meaning and appreciation.
If you’re not familiar with the film or book, I recommend that you view and read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. The book was written by John Berendt, and the film was directed by Clint Eastwood, starring John Cusack and Kevin Spacey. Not only do the actors in the film deliver stellar performances (Kevin Spacey is a doppelganger for Jim Williams), but some of the characters—the more lively ones—are the Savannahians playing themselves. The Lady Chablis, of course, absolutely steals the show. The importance of this goes deeper than making a good film. It strikes at the core of what you and I are fighting for, and that thing that is sometimes hard to describe because it comes from the core of our being that makes us want to fight, and yes, it is worth fighting tooth and nail for. That thing, put simply, is community. In the modern U.S., that word may not convey what it is meant to convey, but I will have you consider this: compare the look and feel of Savannah—either as you’ve experienced it yourself or from Midnight—to that of CID neighborhoods (CID being Community Interest Developments created, built, and often run by developers whose interest is to sell their product, not to create an actual community, with the “government” of that community being an HOA).
Savannah, if my tourist materials are correct, is the first planned city in the US, and it was designed by James Oglethorpe. It is based off of the European model in which there are small blocks intersected by streets with squares of various sizes interspersed at regular intervals in which there are trees, paths, gardens, and an interest-piece in the center. That piece being a fountain, a statute, a work of art, etc. that is a symbol and celebration of something unique to the city and its history. One of the main boulevards, Liberty St., is divided in the middle by enormous, moss-draped oak trees, providing beauty, shade, ambiance, and—to my point—something unique and beautiful that those who live in this fair city can share and be proud of together. That, friends, is what community means. Not a bunch of houses slapped up together at the same time by the same person with a limited palette of “variation,” which are not unique, which are not expressions of the individuals who inhabit them, and definitely are not smashed into every square inch of available land in order to squeeze one more little bit of profit out of the land.
This jewel of a city in the American crown was almost destroyed. We stayed in a historic inn off of Columbia Square. In fact, this square shows up in the opening scenes of Midnight when John Kelso (played by Cusack) is riding a tourist bus into town. It is the square the bus passes with the green fountain in the middle. The scene is shot with historic buildings in the background. What you don’t see due to the magic of movies is that if you were actually standing where the camera angle is and turned around, you would see on one of the corners a one-story building of 1960s or so construction with narrow windows interspersed by longer stretches of rock-texture walls that was so popular at that time—and not since. Apparently, at that time some “forward thinking” folks thought the city was outdated and out of style with its old-fashioned houses, so the idea was to clear them out and make a “modern” city. Oh, how many times has this tragedy played out? Yes, sometimes because it is needed and there is no saving what has deteriorated beyond salvation, but sometimes … sometimes we need to protect our history. Our history is part of our identity, and if we erase it, then we erase our identity. When we erase that shared identity, we are literally erasing our community and, well, that’s when HOA Hells creep in to fill the void.
Enter Jim Williams. His personal history is quite interesting, and the more I learn about him, the more I like him. I wish I could have known him. Though I haven’t met him personally, I do feel I can call him a friend. He is a kindred spirit to us, Homefront Warriors. He saw a great wrong, a takeover by those driven by power and money, that was destroying a sacred community, and he stepped up to fight for it. He leveraged what he had in his knowledge of homes as an interior designer and the money he had built as an antiques dealer and slowly started to buy historic homes in Savannah to save them. He restored them and sold them to people who would then call these beautiful houses their homes. And they are magnificent. Then, he would take that money and save another home, and so on.
His crown jewel is Mercer House. It is a character in the movie Midnight (and yes, I do mean that because it has a definite personality, as does Savannah, which I also argue acts as a character. I have plans to teach a course one day on “Setting as Character” if I can extricate myself enough from HOA Hell to pursue such pleasures). And it is still very much a character in Savannah today. It also makes an appearance in the film Glory, which I also recommend highly. If you’re not familiar with Mercer House, click here to go to the webpage and check it out. I’ll wait for you …
Gorgeous, right? When (not if) you visit Savannah, you can tour the home. And it is still a home. Jim’s nieces own it, and one still lives there. All the furnishings are still Jim’s, and it is as it was when he lovingly and painstakingly restored it. In the film, Cusack’s character remarks that Jim, as an antiques dealer, has quite a collection to which Jim replies with that gorgeous, silky, and unique Savannah accent, “No, Mr. Kelso. Look ah-round. It’s nawt a collecshun. It’s mah home.”
And there it is.
How many of us labor painstakingly, spend hard earned money, take the time to learn the arts of the crafts- or tradesmen to care for our homes? How well do we know that sense of accomplishment or pride when we cross that chore or project off the list and we can look lovingly at this object that is no longer an object because of the time and energy we put into it to either preserve or enhance it? Just as Mercer House is a character, an entity that is alive with personality and character, so too are our homes. They are an expression of and a part of what it means to be “us” as unique individuals. They show our personality and our sense of self, those wonderful things that make us who we are. When someone sees our home (not a house), they see us just as clearly and separately as if we were standing in the yard waving hello.
So what does that mean, then, when our expression of us, that sacred place called “home,” looks just like everyone else's? What does it mean when there are a group of people in this group of houses (not a community), random volunteer persons with no oversight and all the power, tell us what our homes should look like, and particularly, that they should all look the same? Would you stand in rank-and-file with the same persons, dress exactly the same, cut your hair the same as everyone else, and then accept it when if your hair is a quarter inch too long, if you have a scratch on your hand, if you add a pin to your lapel that means something to you that you would be fined, punished, and if you fight it, eradicated? In some HOAs, that is what you experience. And yes, that imagery should drive home what HOAs can be and are for some people.
Jim Williams is a hero to me. I admired him in previous years as a historian and lover of beautiful, old things. Now, I can add more admiration because he fought people who were trying to bully their way into bulldozing Savannah and making it what they wanted and making a profit while they were at it at the sacrifice of the organic community it is. Jim did not fight actual HOAs to my knowledge, but it is the same mentality. Fortunately, at the same time he began to save homes, the women who formed the Historic Savannah Foundation in 1955 started the same work. They joined forces, and through their work and dedication, the beautiful old homes that we can all love, cherish, and enjoy are still there. Savannah is still there. One beautiful, unique personality in the palette of America is still there. America is “the beautiful” not because it’s all the same. It’s beautiful for its variety, for its magnificent personalities, for the range of people and their customs, traditions, behaviors, expressions, and personalities. THAT, friends, is what America means to me, and yes, it is worth fighting for. That is the true community that is our entire nation, and it is that hard-to-explain thing that stirs our red-white-and-blue blood when it is threatened. We are not only fighting for ourselves and our own right to be individuals, we are fighting for that same right for those around us, our true neighbors. For what is a nation but an expanded version of a neighborhood? We will fight to protect the whole, but we must never forget that we must also fight on our own land, in our own communities, for our own homes—the microcosm of the nation itself. For if we can’t or won’t fight for or defend that, then we are no longer the land of the free because we are no longer the home of the brave.
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Yes! My wife and I have visited Savanna and can attest to the beauty of the city. My HOA is comprised of 98 homes on 113 acres next to a river and a small mountain and we have experienced many of the worst behavior that neighbors can exhibit when they have been empowered by the HOA governing documents and lack of oversight. I support you and am doing my best to protect my community from “HOA hell”. Stephen Short, Eugene, Oregon