Metro Pulse/Urban Renewal

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223 Baxter Ave.
2300 sq. ft.
3-4 bedrooms
2.5 baths
$79,900
Contact: Regina Rizzi at Moxie Enterprises (742-3248)

by Matt Edens

Call me a sap, but I love It's A Wonderful Life. I try to catch it every Christmas—a Yuletide tradition that NBC's complicated somewhat with their exclusive monopoly (a move old man Potter would no doubt admire). Frank Capra's best film, it cemented Jimmy Stewart's lock on American Everyman status—and marked his return to Hollywood after flying 25 missions over Germany in a B-17. How's that for heroic?

George Bailey's heroism is, by comparison, subtle. His brother Harry is a genuine war hero, with medals to prove it. But he wouldn't have been if George hadn't been there to save Harry's life years earlier. And Harry isn't the only one George has "saved." In the nightmare glimpse of "Pottersville" we see what the world would have been like without George—Mary a spinster, Mr. Gower a drunk, and the whole town a seedier, meaner place. And, at the movie's end, when everyone toasts George as the "richest man in town" we know that it's really the other way around. It's Bedford Falls that is far richer because of George and the thousands of small ways he's touched everyone's lives.

In fact, it's the millions of ways that the lives of Bedford Falls' residents touch each other that give the town its meaning and value. The movie comes closest to saying it outright several scenes before the nightmare sequence, during the run on the Building and Loan. Confronted by a mob of depositors, George explains how their money isn't sitting in the safe, it's been plowed back into the community, loaned out to build the houses they all live in (interesting, isn't it, how prominently houses and homes figure in this American fairytale). Call Capra a commie agitator if you want, but a quick glance at the deed restrictions in most any new subdivision are all the proof you need that, while home ownership is private property rights at its most basic level, wealth creation through property values is a collective undertaking.

Which brings me to George Bailey's "drafty old barn" of a house. Forget the complicated shtick with the newel post, no matter how endearing it is to anyone who's ever dealt with the eccentricities of an intransigent old house. Instead, consider what George accomplishes by fixing up the old place. Thanks to him, it's no longer a nuisance and headache for the neighbors. The taxes George pays on it will help pay the salary of his friend Bert the cop. And, without a boarded-up ruin that kids throw rocks at, the rest of the houses on the block are suddenly worth more—making the rundown world of Pottersville that much less likely. Whether Capra comes right out and says it or not, fixing up the old place is yet another of the small ways that George Bailey enriches the community.

You could do the same with, say, this house at 223 Baxter Avenue. It's a big, rambling place that bears more than a superficial resemblance to the house in the film. On the frontier between Old North Knoxville and 4th and Gill, you can build on the equity and investment that those neighborhoods have enjoyed. And, by fixing it up you'll add that much more to the value of the whole and maybe encourage someone else to do the same just down the street or maybe around the corner; neighborhood revitalization, like a run on the bank, has a cascading effect. One thing's for certain, you'll be doing more than just buying a house. You'll be making Old North Knoxville—heck, all of Knoxville—a richer place. Which is something the neighbors will surely appreciate, even if they don't show up to give you a basket full of cash and sing Auld Lang Syne.