Unveiled Secrets: Day 20’s Mysterious Story Idea That Will Keep You Guessing
Ah, the idea of a home… it’s where our roots dig deep into the soul of the city, isn’t it? What happens when that tether is severed and your home becomes someone else’s vacant “investment”? Here’s today’s thought-provoking tale: imagine being evicted by forces bigger than us – in this case, a state agency, however necessary for infrastructural growth. Yet, like a story from the heart of LA, Marla Merritt, a woman who’s had her fair share of life’s punches, reclaimed her space in the most Scrader-esque way: by breaking into her dilapidated abode.
It’s more than shelter; it’s where her story took place, a backdrop to the narrative of her life – with victories and defeats, much like a bittersweet screenplay. Now, poised to stay, she stands up against the system that cast her out. A true dramatic tale of one soul versus bureaucracy.
Would you fight for what was yours, for memories and for the scent of homemade albondigas and pozole on Sundays? I‘ve wrestled with SEO algorithms longer than these battles, and each home’s story is as unique as it’s unfathomable, like a script that stands out in a sea of the mundane.
The essence of ‘screenwriting’ is in the twist, and here it’s an emotional, heart-wrenching one: The home calling out ‘Get well, come back’…
This is the 15th year in a row I’ve run this series in April.
Today’s story idea: “A homeless Angeleno broke into her old, vacant home and wants to stay.”
Every few months after she left the narrow white cottage on Poplar Boulevard, Maria Merritt would slink back to the tree-lined street in El Sereno, find a secluded spot and stare at her old house.
No one had lived there since 2007 when Merritt gave up trying to pay the monthly rent to her landlord, the California Department of Transportation. The state agency had left the house — one of hundreds that Caltrans had acquired for a contentious, on-again, off-again extension of the 710 Freeway — vacant and deteriorating, covering the windows with plywood and “No Trespassing” signs.
Two weeks before Merritt lost her home, she’d lost her job as a secretary in L.A. County’s Department of Mental Health. Once the house was gone, she lost her four children. On and off the streets, suffering from depression and addicted to methamphetamine, Merritt eventually lost her hair when, she suspects, another homeless person poured Nair into her shampoo.
But even as the years passed, the house in El Sereno continued to remind her of a better life.
When she looked at her former home, she’d envision her Christmas decorations on the windows and her daughters running down the sidewalk. She’d imagine the smell of the albondigas and pozole she’d cooked on Sundays.
“All the big things that I’ve done. With my job. With my citizenship. With me making the right choices and doing the right things,” recalled Merritt, 57. “Everything happened in that house.”
— —
“The home always said, ‘I’m waiting for you,’” Merritt said through tears. “The home said, ‘Come back. Get well. Come back. Get well.’”
So, Maria moved back home. Now she wants to stay. But the California Department of Transportation, which owns the house, wants her out.
Sounds like the sequel to Nomadland.
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