A HURRICANE & A HOT CHOCOLATE...

October, 2005

It's been a couple of days since Hurricane Wilma blew through and the lights are still out. Gio's parents are still living with him after General Contractors broke through the roof of their condo and heavy rains last year flooded their unit. It's just hot and we need some relief.

After forraging for food and ice from local places offering help to South Florida residents, Gio calls me and tells me to come over. Hey, I've got a tank fiull of gas so I can make the 20 minute drive. It's not dark yet, the curfews aren't in effect so what the hell,

As soon as I get to Gio's condo, here comes Uncle Fester, boxer shorts and all. But this time he has a couple of coffee mugs in his hand. "I made some hot chocolate" he says.

Again this Mo guy had a stack of paper tucked under his arm. Again he rambled on about how he was being persecuted and targeted because of his marriage and how he was exposing the things that the last board had done wrong. What he failed to mention were all of the harassing things he was doing to the neighbors on the other side of the property.

Funny thing is the property looks like Melrose Place, two buildings in close proximity, but most people mind their own business, say a friendly "hello" and really don't talk about other people on the property. So noone knew except a handful of people directly involved, the amound of terrorizing harassment this man was preparing to rain down on this little property.

So as Mo put his papers down, he showed me a letter from the Association's attorney . Since there were a few of us, he asked for more coffee mugs so he could serve us all some hot chocolate from the pot he had on some outside burner near his unit. Gio grabbed a couple of mugs from inside and gave them to him. Who knows, he probably took them to his house to lift our fingerprints from them so he could do some sort of background checks from them.

Well, he came back a few minutes later with this concoction that looked like mud and baby powder, saying it was a little overcooked. Whaterever, I wasn't about to drink it. The guy walks around in his boxer shorts, who knows where his hands have been, let alone the spoon he used to stir this stuff.

So Gio began to walk back into the house and Mo grabs him pretty hard by the arm, saying you have to stay and read this, or something like that. I looked at the letter this time and the attorney was informing his "wife" that he was to be removed from the property within like 10 days of the letter or legal actions would begin against him. He was pretty revved up, but we still didn't understand what was happening. Nor at that point did we really care. We just wanted the lights to come on so we could have a hot shower and home-cooked food.

Finally, the bald guy left and we just sat out under the clear summer sky thinking this is just another day in paradise. Well, Hurricane Wilma kept us in the dark for nearly a month. Unfortunately, Hurricane Mo and the condo's Board of Directors kept us in the dark for another3 months about the reality of what was happening. I guess noone could have forecast what was to come.

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- Evann Black

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