When I first started talking about selling the place, the realtor asked me if I'd done any updates? Had I painted, pulled up carpet or replaced anything? Had I extracted the aging, battle-tested appliances and plugged in newer, shinier models like the ones usually found in the pages of a Sears Catalog?
No.
I hadn't done a damned thing. Oh sure, there'd been vague plans --after I won the lottery, got a book deal, was involved in a class action lawsuit against a soft drink bottler. Sure, then maybe I'd have got a nice, polished steel refrigerator with a built-in ice cream maker and mixed drink blender.
Back when I was looking into selling the place, I'd researched updates, but the numbers didn't work out for most of them --like replacing appliances. Everything I read said you'd maybe get back 3/4 what you paid out for a new stove or dishwasher.
Spending money to lose money, and I can't afford to lose anything, but after talking it over with the realtor, I did agree to pull up the vintage 1970 orange marmalade-colored shag carpet. Removing something that I didn't have to replace seemed well within my skill set.
Basically. Well, not really. I had no idea what I was doing. Comfortably, I can change my oil and change a tire --which aren't things you typically need to do to a house, but I looked it up online and watched the video twice. Then I went out, bought a crowbar, and tried to watch "Bates Motel" on Netflix as I followed the directions of the video I'd seen.
It was a lot harder than I thought. With pliers in hand and Norman Bates (played by the kid from "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory") gingerly edging toward madness, I yanked and tugged and worked up a dirty sweat before eventually coming to the realization that maybe I'd missed something.
The video I'd watched hadn't really pointed out removing the baseboards, just the trim. The carpet was tacked very neatly, and very tightly, under the baseboards. In fact, the method the carpet installer from the age of disco had used varied considerably from the way I'd been shown on Youtube.
Anyway, I got through a couple of episodes of the adventures of Norman Bates and I don't know how many plot points involving drug farms and sex slaves before I worked out what I had to do on my own.
Getting up close and personal with something that had been walked on and God knows what else for a couple of decades was enlightening. The carpet stank. It reeked and I was a little offended. I vacuumed a couple of times a week and I'd bought a carpet cleaner over a year ago, which was used regularly. All the work, all the dog hair I'd pulled up, none of that mattered.
But I rolled the thing up, lugged it out the front door, had a beer, and watched more Netflix before calling it quits around midnight.
I woke up with a terrible headache the next day. I felt terrible: dizzy and weak. I went back to bed, but couldn't sleep. Lying on my back, I couldn't breathe. On my stomach, my head throbbed. My heart sounded weird and loud in my ears, felt like it was going to pop out of my chest. All I could do was shiver and sweat beneath a cocoon of blankets and quilts.
I felt like death.
I gobbled aspirin like breath mints, sipped water and spent the day delirious and terrified until my fever broke in the middle of the afternoon. I drifted in and out of a restless sleep and finally fell well enough to get up after dark.
It days for me to shake it completely off and for a little while I tried to blame the sudden illness on the flu or a bug, but then no one around me got sick --it was just me. I'd gotten a big, fat dose of mold or bacteria or something else trapped for 40 years.
Luckily, cleaning out the fridge turned out to be a lot easier.
Friday, June 27, 2014
Monday, June 23, 2014
Dog days
There hasn't been much of a change in the last few days: Nobody has stopped by. I haven't heard anything from the realtor, either, which is fine. I'm still cleaning up and throwing things out. With the mower out of commission, the yard doesn't look all that great either.
Everybody has been very encouraging.
"My parents have had their house up since April. They've only had like two people come look at it."
"It took two years for us to sell our house."
"I just gave up. I think I'll probably die there."
The competition around Pinch is fierce. I counted no less than a dozen signs advertising different houses for sale by different realtors. One or two people have forgone professional help and have slapped up a $2 "House for Sale" sign they got from the hardware store.
I don't know how many people have quietly listed their places on Craigslist, through the trading paper or have posted Polaroids in gas station restrooms with phone numbers --it could be twice that many.
I keep telling myself it's too early to get discouraged, it's too soon to feel rejected. I have to be patient. I am patient. It's one of the few virtues I think I have --I know how to wait.
I have to wonder why everyone is leaving town, though.
As far as places go, Pinch is quiet, though I think it's like a lot of small towns --graying and thinning out. When I first took my kid to cub scouts, the thing that really stood out were the number of older parents who'd brought kids to the meeting. There were an awful lot of 6 and 7-year-olds living with their grandparents or their great-aunt because their Mom and Dad were doing three or four years for running a meth lab.
A couple of blocks over, there's a retired truck driver trying to raise a grandson. I met him a few weeks after I moved into the house --a nice enough fella, who drove around in a big truck and every once in a while went out to ride motorcycles with his nephew.
He was somewhere around 70-years-old and living alone when he got a call in the middle of the night from the sheriff.
"Donnie, you've got to come right now."
His son, he told me, was sitting in the back of one cruiser. His grandson, Terry, was in the next one.
"He told me I had to take him home right then," Donnie said.
"He was so little," the old man whispered, still horrified that his grandson had been placed in the back of locked police car.
And so Donnie took Terry home, as old as he was, and as inexperienced as he was with raising children.
"I spent my whole life working," he told me. "I didn't think I could handle this."
So, he reached out to a woman named Martha he'd met at church, an old widow who needed help with the mortgage and was struggling in her later years. She took them in, gave the boy a room and had been like a grandmother to him.
They'd constructed a family of a sort.
"No sex," Donnie told me one weekend, after he'd accepted Jesus Christ as his personal savior --a last minute conversion if ever I heard one.
"We tried, you know?" He told me, while we watched a fishing show, one rainy afternoon in his living room. The boys were in the back playing a video game. "I couldn't satisfy her and she couldn't satisfy me." He shrugged. "Nothing we could do. I ain't what she wants and she ain't what I want, but that's alright. We do alright. We ain't in love, but we make this work."
Martha just shrugged and smiled her big, artificial smile.
"Don't mind him," she said. "He's been like that since he got baptized."
They lived together. She had her room and he slept in a recliner in the living room, probably.
I saw them more when I first moved there and less since. A little over a year ago, I met Donnie's son and then Terry's mom.
They arrived separately and did not travel together, as far as I could tell.
They seemed like nice people, asked me if their son had been any trouble and said I should call if ever Terry was a bother. I could call Martha. She'd send somebody down.
I lied and said he was never trouble, but I meant it when I told them, "He's welcome here."
I can't remember the last time I saw any of them --since last Fall maybe, at least Christmas. I haven't seen Donnie's truck and there have been none of Martha's grand kids walking around looking for Terry, who sometimes wanders off when he takes a notion to.
Maybe they moved on, too.
Everybody has been very encouraging.
"My parents have had their house up since April. They've only had like two people come look at it."
"It took two years for us to sell our house."
"I just gave up. I think I'll probably die there."
The competition around Pinch is fierce. I counted no less than a dozen signs advertising different houses for sale by different realtors. One or two people have forgone professional help and have slapped up a $2 "House for Sale" sign they got from the hardware store.
I don't know how many people have quietly listed their places on Craigslist, through the trading paper or have posted Polaroids in gas station restrooms with phone numbers --it could be twice that many.
I keep telling myself it's too early to get discouraged, it's too soon to feel rejected. I have to be patient. I am patient. It's one of the few virtues I think I have --I know how to wait.
I have to wonder why everyone is leaving town, though.
As far as places go, Pinch is quiet, though I think it's like a lot of small towns --graying and thinning out. When I first took my kid to cub scouts, the thing that really stood out were the number of older parents who'd brought kids to the meeting. There were an awful lot of 6 and 7-year-olds living with their grandparents or their great-aunt because their Mom and Dad were doing three or four years for running a meth lab.
A couple of blocks over, there's a retired truck driver trying to raise a grandson. I met him a few weeks after I moved into the house --a nice enough fella, who drove around in a big truck and every once in a while went out to ride motorcycles with his nephew.
He was somewhere around 70-years-old and living alone when he got a call in the middle of the night from the sheriff.
"Donnie, you've got to come right now."
His son, he told me, was sitting in the back of one cruiser. His grandson, Terry, was in the next one.
"He told me I had to take him home right then," Donnie said.
"He was so little," the old man whispered, still horrified that his grandson had been placed in the back of locked police car.
And so Donnie took Terry home, as old as he was, and as inexperienced as he was with raising children.
"I spent my whole life working," he told me. "I didn't think I could handle this."
So, he reached out to a woman named Martha he'd met at church, an old widow who needed help with the mortgage and was struggling in her later years. She took them in, gave the boy a room and had been like a grandmother to him.
They'd constructed a family of a sort.
"No sex," Donnie told me one weekend, after he'd accepted Jesus Christ as his personal savior --a last minute conversion if ever I heard one.
"We tried, you know?" He told me, while we watched a fishing show, one rainy afternoon in his living room. The boys were in the back playing a video game. "I couldn't satisfy her and she couldn't satisfy me." He shrugged. "Nothing we could do. I ain't what she wants and she ain't what I want, but that's alright. We do alright. We ain't in love, but we make this work."
Martha just shrugged and smiled her big, artificial smile.
"Don't mind him," she said. "He's been like that since he got baptized."
They lived together. She had her room and he slept in a recliner in the living room, probably.
I saw them more when I first moved there and less since. A little over a year ago, I met Donnie's son and then Terry's mom.
They arrived separately and did not travel together, as far as I could tell.
They seemed like nice people, asked me if their son had been any trouble and said I should call if ever Terry was a bother. I could call Martha. She'd send somebody down.
I lied and said he was never trouble, but I meant it when I told them, "He's welcome here."
I can't remember the last time I saw any of them --since last Fall maybe, at least Christmas. I haven't seen Donnie's truck and there have been none of Martha's grand kids walking around looking for Terry, who sometimes wanders off when he takes a notion to.
Maybe they moved on, too.
Thursday, June 19, 2014
List Serve
I'm making a list of things to tell the new owner --when there is a new owner. The closest I've seen to even vague interest in the house is a lady in a beat up Honda who slowed as she passed my driveway.
Odds are, she wasn't interested. I just wrote something she didn't like about one of her favorite bands on "Mountain Stage" and just wants to hit me with a tire iron.
Maybe, if she comes back I can get her to take a look around. She might be in the market for a three bedroom rural charmer with an ample yard and plenty of storage. If nothing else, there is plenty of space to hide bodies.
Anyway, things to remember tell the future owner of Casa del Bill:
1-Buy a riding lawn mower. Don't be stupid. You'd rather do other things than push a mower.
2-Pile Hardware on the West Side is your friend. When your lawnmower, weed eater, chainsaw, tiller or other unsurprisingly dangerous power tool you have runs into trouble, go see them. However, expect it to take weeks to get it back, cost more than you want it to, and figure at least one of the two guys working the counter is going to jerk you around a little just because he's bored.
It's OK. You'd do the same thing if you worked the small engine repair counter of a hardware store and they can fix almost anything.
3-Eat and drink at the Pit Stop at your own risk. The food makes nursing home food seem exciting and exotic. The dining room is noisy and has all the charm of a rented storage unit, which it more than slightly resembles because of the lack of windows, but it does have the novelty of being a used car lot by day and a bar by night.
It may be the first of its kind and will probably be featured in a tourism department "best of WV" list eventually.
I'm pretty sure tourism departments are staffed by career alcoholics.
4-The old lady at the hardware store in town will not begrudge you a piece of candy if you buy something, though she will look at you weird if you show up wearing comic book characters on your shirt --especially if you're older than about 12.
5-Support the local fire department. Buy your Christmas tree at the lot across from the fire house. It supports the local department and puts you on a friendly basis with the guys who will save your stuff if it catches fire.
6-Smith's Food Fair in Big Chimney isn't a grocery store so much as a post-modern art installation. You're not expected to actually eat anything you buy from Smith's, just pay for it.
7-The old guy who cuts hair in Big Chimney does a decent job and works cheap, but seems to know a little too much about "Swamp People." I imagine being a barber in a small town means you have blocks of time that go unfilled. Apparently, those blocks of time coincide with shows about folk who hunt alligators for a living and go "Yee-haw" from every now and again.
8-The beer selection at the gas station is disappointing, but sort of insulting, as if they want to appeal to some secret set of hipsters. PBR in bottles? Why, lord, why?
The whiskey selection isn't much better and everyone stares at you if you spend more than thirty seconds looking at the stuff on the shelves. Buy your hooch in Charleston.
9-Don't bother calling the Division of Highways to complain about road maintenance or snow removal. They aren't coming, and don't care that you need to get to work, church or to the hospital. In winter, Cavender Road is so far down the list of priorities that state road crews will be making snow angels in the parking lot at the capitol before they'll bring a truck out.
Just invest in four-wheel drive, good snow tires and just as importantly, a decent pair of boots.
Sometimes it's not worth white knuckling it up the hill. Better to park the car across the street from the gas station and just walk home.
10-When your car invariably ends up in a ditch toward the bottom of the hill, call Chambers Towing. 304-965-5634. They'll get it out and the driver will tell you about the going rate for heroin (turns out to be about 6 to 8 bucks per serving --cheaper than two PBRs tall boys at The Empty Glass) and other unsavory things that maybe an elementary school kid standing nearby shouldn't hear.
Still, Chambers is the only towing company that will come out your way when the roads are dodgy, but you better have cash.
The going rate to get a car out of a ditch is $100. Negotiating seems foolish.
11- In October, for the trick-or-treaters, put the bucket of candy down by the mailbox. Nobody is hiking the driveway. This also includes Jehovah Witnesses and most door-to-door salesmen.
Also, there will not be a lot of trick-or-treaters. All the kids go to the neighborhoods where the houses are closer together. Never buy more than a bag of candy and only buy candy you'll eat.
12- Speaking of driveways, invest in some ice melt and a good shovel.
13-Go ahead and put the garbage company's number in your phone. You'll be calling it every single time you put a broken chair or worn out bookshelf on the day they say they pick up such things, because they won't. Expect to see your lifeless, gray Christmas tree sitting by the side of the road until around April.
14-It will be a fight to get the DMV to admit that Pinch exists. I'm still not sure what the zip code is and I've tried several, but the DMV still won't send me my registration in the mail.
15- Stock up on fire wood and buy the store brand fire starters at Kroger's in the summer. They're cheaper in the summer and you only need half a stick to start a good fire.
16-Choose AT&T over Sprint, unless you like going room to room trying to get a signal to text your girlfriend.
17-Neither the Chinese place or Mexican restaurant at the shopping center in Elkview aren't that great, but the library is really nice. Also, the local Kroger's regularly puts fruits and vegetables on sale and marks down mushrooms and eggplant.
I don't think the locals like them.
I mention this because the South Charleston location does the same thing with cheese.
18-The neighborhood dogs are friendly and will come into the yard for you to scratch behind their ears and beg for food. The girls on horses, however, will not and seem to think of anyone standing in their front yard is a potential serial killer and not some idiot suburbanite who thinks horses are kind of cool because he doesn't seem one every day.
19- The cop two doors down will let you get by with speeding through town if he recognizes your car, as long as you're not completely tearing ass. However, he lets his lawn turn into a jungle and could care less about the bare-chested kids zipping up and down the road on their motorbikes and ATVs.
20- Pinch is only about eight minutes from the Capitol Flea Market, which would be a lot cooler if it wasn't infested with professional junk dealers trying to pawn off their overstocks of Avon, Home Interior and counterfeit Pokemon cards.
Never buy garden tools or a lawn mower there.
Odds are, she wasn't interested. I just wrote something she didn't like about one of her favorite bands on "Mountain Stage" and just wants to hit me with a tire iron.
Maybe, if she comes back I can get her to take a look around. She might be in the market for a three bedroom rural charmer with an ample yard and plenty of storage. If nothing else, there is plenty of space to hide bodies.
Anyway, things to remember tell the future owner of Casa del Bill:
1-Buy a riding lawn mower. Don't be stupid. You'd rather do other things than push a mower.
2-Pile Hardware on the West Side is your friend. When your lawnmower, weed eater, chainsaw, tiller or other unsurprisingly dangerous power tool you have runs into trouble, go see them. However, expect it to take weeks to get it back, cost more than you want it to, and figure at least one of the two guys working the counter is going to jerk you around a little just because he's bored.
It's OK. You'd do the same thing if you worked the small engine repair counter of a hardware store and they can fix almost anything.
3-Eat and drink at the Pit Stop at your own risk. The food makes nursing home food seem exciting and exotic. The dining room is noisy and has all the charm of a rented storage unit, which it more than slightly resembles because of the lack of windows, but it does have the novelty of being a used car lot by day and a bar by night.
It may be the first of its kind and will probably be featured in a tourism department "best of WV" list eventually.
I'm pretty sure tourism departments are staffed by career alcoholics.
4-The old lady at the hardware store in town will not begrudge you a piece of candy if you buy something, though she will look at you weird if you show up wearing comic book characters on your shirt --especially if you're older than about 12.
5-Support the local fire department. Buy your Christmas tree at the lot across from the fire house. It supports the local department and puts you on a friendly basis with the guys who will save your stuff if it catches fire.
6-Smith's Food Fair in Big Chimney isn't a grocery store so much as a post-modern art installation. You're not expected to actually eat anything you buy from Smith's, just pay for it.
7-The old guy who cuts hair in Big Chimney does a decent job and works cheap, but seems to know a little too much about "Swamp People." I imagine being a barber in a small town means you have blocks of time that go unfilled. Apparently, those blocks of time coincide with shows about folk who hunt alligators for a living and go "Yee-haw" from every now and again.
8-The beer selection at the gas station is disappointing, but sort of insulting, as if they want to appeal to some secret set of hipsters. PBR in bottles? Why, lord, why?
The whiskey selection isn't much better and everyone stares at you if you spend more than thirty seconds looking at the stuff on the shelves. Buy your hooch in Charleston.
9-Don't bother calling the Division of Highways to complain about road maintenance or snow removal. They aren't coming, and don't care that you need to get to work, church or to the hospital. In winter, Cavender Road is so far down the list of priorities that state road crews will be making snow angels in the parking lot at the capitol before they'll bring a truck out.
Just invest in four-wheel drive, good snow tires and just as importantly, a decent pair of boots.
Sometimes it's not worth white knuckling it up the hill. Better to park the car across the street from the gas station and just walk home.
10-When your car invariably ends up in a ditch toward the bottom of the hill, call Chambers Towing. 304-965-5634. They'll get it out and the driver will tell you about the going rate for heroin (turns out to be about 6 to 8 bucks per serving --cheaper than two PBRs tall boys at The Empty Glass) and other unsavory things that maybe an elementary school kid standing nearby shouldn't hear.
Still, Chambers is the only towing company that will come out your way when the roads are dodgy, but you better have cash.
The going rate to get a car out of a ditch is $100. Negotiating seems foolish.
11- In October, for the trick-or-treaters, put the bucket of candy down by the mailbox. Nobody is hiking the driveway. This also includes Jehovah Witnesses and most door-to-door salesmen.
Also, there will not be a lot of trick-or-treaters. All the kids go to the neighborhoods where the houses are closer together. Never buy more than a bag of candy and only buy candy you'll eat.
12- Speaking of driveways, invest in some ice melt and a good shovel.
13-Go ahead and put the garbage company's number in your phone. You'll be calling it every single time you put a broken chair or worn out bookshelf on the day they say they pick up such things, because they won't. Expect to see your lifeless, gray Christmas tree sitting by the side of the road until around April.
14-It will be a fight to get the DMV to admit that Pinch exists. I'm still not sure what the zip code is and I've tried several, but the DMV still won't send me my registration in the mail.
15- Stock up on fire wood and buy the store brand fire starters at Kroger's in the summer. They're cheaper in the summer and you only need half a stick to start a good fire.
16-Choose AT&T over Sprint, unless you like going room to room trying to get a signal to text your girlfriend.
17-Neither the Chinese place or Mexican restaurant at the shopping center in Elkview aren't that great, but the library is really nice. Also, the local Kroger's regularly puts fruits and vegetables on sale and marks down mushrooms and eggplant.
I don't think the locals like them.
I mention this because the South Charleston location does the same thing with cheese.
18-The neighborhood dogs are friendly and will come into the yard for you to scratch behind their ears and beg for food. The girls on horses, however, will not and seem to think of anyone standing in their front yard is a potential serial killer and not some idiot suburbanite who thinks horses are kind of cool because he doesn't seem one every day.
19- The cop two doors down will let you get by with speeding through town if he recognizes your car, as long as you're not completely tearing ass. However, he lets his lawn turn into a jungle and could care less about the bare-chested kids zipping up and down the road on their motorbikes and ATVs.
20- Pinch is only about eight minutes from the Capitol Flea Market, which would be a lot cooler if it wasn't infested with professional junk dealers trying to pawn off their overstocks of Avon, Home Interior and counterfeit Pokemon cards.
Never buy garden tools or a lawn mower there.
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Sisyphus
There's nothing like spending four hours in the sun mowing the back yard with a push mower to help you reevaluate some of your life decisions.
.
When I bought the place, I remember telling one of the realtors that I'd just use a push mower. I didn't need an expensive riding lawn mower. It was good exercise, I told him. I worked in an office and the fresh air would be good for me.
He looked at me like I was the biggest idiot he'd seen all day. Given that he works in real estate, I think I accomplished something.
If there is one thing I consistently bitch about it is the yard. It's just too much work and makes me resent the neighbors, who all have riding lawn tractors --some with XM radio and bluetooth capability, I'm sure. If they don't, they can afford to pay truckloads of scruffy, tattooed guys to show up in a pick up truck dragging a trailer loaded with those cool, speed mowers that wipe out an acre in about twenty minutes.
I just have me and the push mower my sister gave me two summers ago. I can't even reliably get my teenage kid to help. He'd rather sit in his room, play video games and post disturbing things on Facebook.
I'd rather do that, too, but the yard has got to get done. Otherwise, I'd never see the deer coming.
The next owner will be wiser than me or more well-heeled and can afford the tools needed to make this place something special.
I think sometimes about where I will go next.
Back at the first of the year, I spoke with someone about getting a raise. With the Affordable Care Act, I was finally going to have to take the company insurance. I needed it. I hadn't had insurance since the divorce and had been skating on my typically excellent health, but I figured all streaks come to an end eventually.
The state is full up of people with bad health, bad habits and dim prospects.
The bite for the new, mandated (but still sort of crappy) insurance was about $180, which sounds like a bargain if you can afford that --and I probably could, if I didn't also have a car, or if stopped buying groceries regularly.
I tried to explain the predicament I was in and thought my work should speak for itself.
He said, no.
A couple of months later, I posted on Facebook about my plans to put the house on the market, I was asked about that. Of late, it seems like there have been a lot of comings and goings --mostly goings. He wanted to know if I was looking at leaving.
I said I wasn't, but that I couldn't afford to keep the house much longer. He asked me, "Well, don't you have a girlfriend? Couldn't she move in with you?"
I barely had an answer for that one, except no. It seemed baffling that he would think that was a suggestion he could make: I can't pay you any more. Why don't you get a roommate?
The other day, some friends visited from Louisville. They left last year for better opportunities, more money --seemed very happy with the Bluegrass State -- and asked why I hadn't joined them already?
The house, I told them, the house.
This isn't to say that I will leave West Virginia. My radio show debuts next month and even if I think the pay sucks, I still like my job at the newspaper.
There are other reasons more complicated and I think of them while I push the mower back and forth --but maybe not for a while.
As the sun was drooping over the horizon and I was finishing the back half of the lot, the oil cap on the mower inexplicably came off like a champagne cork. Oil, like thin, store-bought gravy spilled out all over the mower. The motor came to a stop and has not started again.
Monday, June 9, 2014
Christmas with the Fuhrer
We had to clear mom's house out over the weekend --by we, I mean my sisters did it. All I did was show up like a looter and carry off a few pieces of furniture. None of it was absolutely necessary and under the circumstances, with me trying to get rid of things, probably a little counterproductive.
And expensive. With gas, tolls and driving my car back and forth, renting the 14 foot Uhaul truck ran around $300, which is a lot.
There was a snag with the pickup. Instead of getting it in Virginia, I had to get it just over the border in Princeton, about 30 miles from the house where I grew up, at a little place that specialized in hunting gear, paramilitary fashions, doomsday prepping and taxidermy.
It was a weird enough place: a stuffed river otter sat in the middle of the store and the back wall was lined with rebel flag belt buckles.
I'd been here before. Ten or fifteen years ago, it was the snack bar to a go-cart track. The church I attended back made a trip to it and we all drove around in circles until our faces were rubbed raw and sore. The ghost of that track still remained, though choked now with high grass and weeds and locked behind a chain link fence.
"The owner shut it down when he bought the place nine years ago," the lady at the counter told me.
It seemed to me that there was some great and ugly truth in that place. I didn't stick around to take a second look.
I got to the house just before lunch and with some help loaded up the things I'd asked to take. My sister also convinced me to take an oak book shelf.
"Mom paid $300 for it," she said.
I think she just wanted to make sure that not every nice thing ended up getting sold off for pennies and I like books. She might have thought I'd put books on it.
It was odd to see people pick over my mother's things, odder still to see some asshole in shorts and black socks with a matching black pistol clipped to his straining waistband.
Who takes a handgun to a yard sale?
As the bargain hunters pilfered through my mom's stuff, the neighbors across the street were out mowing their lawns. One guy at the larger of the two houses had his iPod on and was belting out the chorus to some song as he rounded the corner on his riding mower. To the right and across the road, a young, severe-looking man worked a push mower.
I sort of sympathized with him. Pushing a mower can get to be real work, but then he took his grimy shirt off. Black tattoos covered his pale arms and torso, the most prominent of which was a thick, black swastika just under his ribcage.
Other tattoos seemed to support the general theme of a deep, abiding (and exclusive) love for white people.
"Holy shit," I said dragging a washing machine to the truck. "Are you fucking kidding me?"
I hadn't seen that kind of shit even on the grounds of the National Alliance --of course, that had been in the winter. You'd expect that even the Nazis know to keep their shirts on in the snow --well, I don't know that for sure.
Anyway, knowing that the Third Reich was living next door to where I grew up made me feel less bad about my Mom living in a nursing home.
A little later, my kid sister told me the buyer came by earlier, said she loved the place.
"It feels like home," the woman told her.
My sister was in tears. I wasn't far behind. My feelings were complicated. I'd never wanted to remain here, never wanted to settle in Pearisburg, but I had a lot of memories of waking up in this house. I remembered the old paint on the walls and what the place smelled like during the holidays.
I almost lost it completely looking out the window of my old bedroom.
I spent too much time opening drawers and closets. I have no idea what I was looking for. I lingered over my mother's insane collection of Christmas crap for probably 20 minutes. For years, mom collected little Santa Clause decorations. She must have had close to a thousand jolly, little fat men. It had taken her decades to amass them and now they were all up for sale in bulk.
I recoiled at the cost, at the hours of her life she'd traded for the money to buy these things and now they were going for very little. It seemed a terrible trade.
My girlfriend said, "Did she enjoy looking for them? Did she like putting them out?"
Of course, she did. Mom loved those things, delighted in them.
"Then it's OK," she said. "It was what she wanted."
On the way back, we stopped in to visit my mom. It had been a couple of months since I'd been down and I felt horrible that first time I'd come to visit in weeks was to come take her stuff.
I wear my guilt like a cheap tattoo.
Mom was nicer about my absence than I deserved, but she didn't like that I couldn't stay for long. I didn't like that I couldn't stay very long, but I had obligations and responsibilities, among them a marooned 19-year-old who got off work at 7.
Buses don't run back and forth through Pinch on the weekends.
I took the furniture back to my house, managed to get it put away and resolved to throw out things that would be replaced by the new stuff. The things I've put up -- my mother's table and chairs, the corner cabinets and her silverware -- have added a little maternal warmth to the kitchen.
It feels like part of her is here, but the house doesn't feel like home, not to me.
I hope it will for somebody else.
And expensive. With gas, tolls and driving my car back and forth, renting the 14 foot Uhaul truck ran around $300, which is a lot.
There was a snag with the pickup. Instead of getting it in Virginia, I had to get it just over the border in Princeton, about 30 miles from the house where I grew up, at a little place that specialized in hunting gear, paramilitary fashions, doomsday prepping and taxidermy.
It was a weird enough place: a stuffed river otter sat in the middle of the store and the back wall was lined with rebel flag belt buckles.
I'd been here before. Ten or fifteen years ago, it was the snack bar to a go-cart track. The church I attended back made a trip to it and we all drove around in circles until our faces were rubbed raw and sore. The ghost of that track still remained, though choked now with high grass and weeds and locked behind a chain link fence.
"The owner shut it down when he bought the place nine years ago," the lady at the counter told me.
It seemed to me that there was some great and ugly truth in that place. I didn't stick around to take a second look.
I got to the house just before lunch and with some help loaded up the things I'd asked to take. My sister also convinced me to take an oak book shelf.
"Mom paid $300 for it," she said.
I think she just wanted to make sure that not every nice thing ended up getting sold off for pennies and I like books. She might have thought I'd put books on it.
It was odd to see people pick over my mother's things, odder still to see some asshole in shorts and black socks with a matching black pistol clipped to his straining waistband.
Who takes a handgun to a yard sale?
As the bargain hunters pilfered through my mom's stuff, the neighbors across the street were out mowing their lawns. One guy at the larger of the two houses had his iPod on and was belting out the chorus to some song as he rounded the corner on his riding mower. To the right and across the road, a young, severe-looking man worked a push mower.
I sort of sympathized with him. Pushing a mower can get to be real work, but then he took his grimy shirt off. Black tattoos covered his pale arms and torso, the most prominent of which was a thick, black swastika just under his ribcage.
Other tattoos seemed to support the general theme of a deep, abiding (and exclusive) love for white people.
"Holy shit," I said dragging a washing machine to the truck. "Are you fucking kidding me?"
I hadn't seen that kind of shit even on the grounds of the National Alliance --of course, that had been in the winter. You'd expect that even the Nazis know to keep their shirts on in the snow --well, I don't know that for sure.
Anyway, knowing that the Third Reich was living next door to where I grew up made me feel less bad about my Mom living in a nursing home.
A little later, my kid sister told me the buyer came by earlier, said she loved the place.
"It feels like home," the woman told her.
My sister was in tears. I wasn't far behind. My feelings were complicated. I'd never wanted to remain here, never wanted to settle in Pearisburg, but I had a lot of memories of waking up in this house. I remembered the old paint on the walls and what the place smelled like during the holidays.
I almost lost it completely looking out the window of my old bedroom.
I spent too much time opening drawers and closets. I have no idea what I was looking for. I lingered over my mother's insane collection of Christmas crap for probably 20 minutes. For years, mom collected little Santa Clause decorations. She must have had close to a thousand jolly, little fat men. It had taken her decades to amass them and now they were all up for sale in bulk.
I recoiled at the cost, at the hours of her life she'd traded for the money to buy these things and now they were going for very little. It seemed a terrible trade.
My girlfriend said, "Did she enjoy looking for them? Did she like putting them out?"
Of course, she did. Mom loved those things, delighted in them.
"Then it's OK," she said. "It was what she wanted."
On the way back, we stopped in to visit my mom. It had been a couple of months since I'd been down and I felt horrible that first time I'd come to visit in weeks was to come take her stuff.
I wear my guilt like a cheap tattoo.
Mom was nicer about my absence than I deserved, but she didn't like that I couldn't stay for long. I didn't like that I couldn't stay very long, but I had obligations and responsibilities, among them a marooned 19-year-old who got off work at 7.
Buses don't run back and forth through Pinch on the weekends.
I took the furniture back to my house, managed to get it put away and resolved to throw out things that would be replaced by the new stuff. The things I've put up -- my mother's table and chairs, the corner cabinets and her silverware -- have added a little maternal warmth to the kitchen.
It feels like part of her is here, but the house doesn't feel like home, not to me.
I hope it will for somebody else.
Friday, June 6, 2014
The Fifth Column
The
deer have been a problem on Cavender Drive from the beginning. They will always be a problem until homeowners are allowed to include mines in their landscaping plans.
Of course, I
didn’t always think so. The summer I moved here, I thought it was something
magnificent to watch five or six of them graze in the yard across the road,
watch them pull apples off the tree and go about their peaceful deer existence.
It was like something out of an old Disney film.
I
stopped thinking so after I put in a garden.
The
garden was my first real attempt to make a go at living here. As a boy, I
remembered how my father had raised a garden. We’d had about half an acre and
he’d converted maybe a quarter of that into mostly vegetables I didn’t much
like, including zucchini, spaghetti squash, yellow squash, butternut squash,
acorn squash and probably some other squash I’ve probably blocked out.
He
also grew white corn –and hot peppers, which I once convinced my younger sister
were carrots and then got her to eat one.
I
figure if my father beat me, I probably deserved it.
As a child, I frequently deserved whatever violence was done to me. So much so that once, at a funeral for the father for one of my oldest friends, a cousin of the friend greeted me and said, "Don't I owe you an ass whooping?"
I shrugged and then said, "Probably."
I got off with a handshake.
Anyway,
a garden was a way to mark the land, to tattoo it, to call it my own. I got
myself a seed catalog, ordered my planned crops, which included, oddly enough,
a couple varieties of squash –my 10-year-old self would have been appalled.
Winter
fizzled out early and I got seeds in the ground early and everything was great.
I had spinach and lettuce. I had beets, which I’d never really eaten before. By
May, my tomatoes and peppers were thriving and then the deer showed up.
The
antlered marauders wiped out my peppers and put a hurt on my tomatoes.
They
did not, however, touch the zucchini squash or the pumpkins (which is another
kind of squash).
I
tried keeping them out. I put up fencing. They knocked it down. I hung tin cans
on a string along the fence, put marbles in the cans to rattle when they
tripped over it in hopes of frightening the deer off. They thought it was
dinner music. I peed near the edge of the garden, thinking the smell might ward
them off. They left mounds of deer poop in return.
In
fact, the only reason my garden survived is because I put in a couple of ghost
pepper plants, which the deer happily munched on, until they got hold of a
single, ripe pepper.
I
found that pepper a few feet from the garden, a discernible bite missing from
it.
I
laughed like a mad man.
The
deer stayed gone the rest of the season, my tomatoes rallied and I did ok with
the crops that survived.
I
battled them again last year. Again, they did in the peppers, wiped out my
eggplant and I never saw a single fava bean.
I didn't grow more ghost peppers. Other than as a biological weapon, they don't really have much of a use. You can't make salsa with them, take the stuff to parties, unless the point is a suicide pact.
This year, I’m using a spray that smells like a rancid baby
diaper and probably tastes like a taco made from pickled human flesh. I’m also
putting up new netting and may dig a trench around the tomatoes and fill it
with sharpened spikes.
It
seems like a lot of trouble to do all this, particularly since growing a garden
seems counterproductive to my stated goal. It suggests an interest in staying and I argued about just that thing over the winter: Why grow anything if
you’re not sure that you’ll be there to harvest it?
I
guess because I don’t know.
There’s
no telling how fast anything sells.
My
Mom had a stroke a year and a half ago which left her with her mind, but
wrecked her body. She can’t walk, can’t dress herself and has to rely on others
for very basic needs.
Among
other things, the stroke made her trade in her solidly middle-class four
bedroom, two-bath house with a smallish kitchen, but a nice dining room for a
double occupancy dorm room with a dementia patient for a roommate.
I
need to add that I think she gets decent care. Also her friends come to visit
her often at the nursing home. My sisters get their at least a couple of times
a month and I visit maybe once every other month now.
Still,
in order for her to continue to receive care there through Medicaid or Medicare
or whatever, my sisters had to put Mom’s house up for sale. They had to just
get it on the market, if only to show they were acting in good faith, but
everyone was worried that the house wouldn’t sell. The house is old and it
needed some work.
Expectations
were low, but they put it on the market on a Tuesday and had an offer by
Friday. That was last month. Closing is a week from now.
It’s
a good house in a nice neighborhood. I never knew how great it was until I
lived in half the rat holes and dives I’ve lived in over the last 20 years. It
was a palace compared to that trailer with the cardboard walls that shook and
shuddered whenever a heavy truck went past the lot. It was a mansion next to
the swampy, wasp-infested apartment I lived in with the gun-happy, junky neighbors next door.
I’ve
lived in plenty of shitty places and next to even shittier people.
The house in Pinch isn’t so bad. I just can't afford it and just don't want to be there anymore. The people are friendly. Everybody waves, but they also leave you be. There's also a sheriff's deputy a couple of doors down. The police cruiser probably
wards off meth addicts like a bulb of garlic keeps the vampires at bay and is helpful with pesky door-to-door salesmen.
Still, the
old guy who had the house before me had it on the market for over two years before
he discounted the price and people weren’t banging down the door to get in here
even then. I'm hoping that's just the housing bubble collapse and the general stream of people leaving West Virginia, which would seem to me to make home buying more of a buyer's market than a seller's market locally.
But... we weren't fracking in West Virginia as much three years ago as we are now. Coal money is declining, butcertainly, any second now, this whole creative economy stuff I've been hearing about for the last 15 years is just about ready to catch on. Some hot shot video game designer is just dying to come live out in Pinch, telecommute to Istanbul or wherever quality first-person-shooters are made, and do battle in their off-time with the local deer population.
Maybe there will be four or five of them and there will be a bidding war.
My dreams are made of this.
In the meantime, I've got reality. There
isn’t a lot of wiggle room with my price, but I think the house is worth what I’m
asking even if it takes a little while to get it. I’d rather whoever buys the
place think it’s worth at least that, too.
So,
if I have to wait a while, this isn’t a bad place to wait and if I have to
wait, I’m prepared to battle the deer for a little while longer. At least, I’ll
have plenty of squash to eat, and if I'm lucky, a few tomatoes.
Wednesday, June 4, 2014
Castaways
When I first got the house, I bought the old furniture of a co-worker with a couple of hundred bucks after she'd decided to leave the well-paying world of rural journalism for the drudgery of a Masters program in Seattle.
Not much had made the move from Charleston to Pinch and even after I bought the loveseat and chairs, the place seemed kind of empty. There was a lot of space to fill.
A few months later, I came into a little bit of money --not a lot of money --but a little. It was enough to pay my taxes, put three tires and new brakes on my recently purchased car, go on one truly epic grocery store spree (It was the only time in my life when I loaded a grocery cart and didn't think about whether I had enough in my account to cover it. We ate like princes --for a couple of days) and it bought some furniture.
It paid for a new mattress and box springs, a big heavy desk where I thought I'd finish one of my novels and an old couch I got from Habitat for Humanity.
I used the mattress and box springs every day, but nobody much liked the couch. It sat in the den, near the fireplace. Only the dogs liked to sit on it and then one of them took it in her head to occasionally water it, perhaps thinking it might grow into a sectional, and nobody wanted to sit on it.
The desk I filled with unimportant papers, various power cords to things I probably don't still own and other crap I couldn't figure out what else to do. A friend gave me a desktop computer, after I complained that I couldn't do much with this wonky, buggy laptop I'm writing on right now.
I plugged the desktop in, loaded it up with software and made a conscious effort not to hook it up to the internet: no distractions. It was simply going to be something I wrote on.
I turned it on two or three times and then buried the thing under Christmas stockings, record albums and a signed sketch by Jaime Hernandez.
As soon as I decided to put the house up on the market, I started thinking about what sort of place I'd likely find myself living in next.
Smaller.
The house is basically three bedrooms, two baths, a decent sized living room, a fairly spacious eat-in kitchen and a back room with the fireplace that's almost 1/3 the size of the rest of the place.
In another life, I imagined that room could have been used for entertaining. I might have put in a bar, a liquor cabinet and a table for poker games or other more nerdly pursuits. I might have picked up a pinball machine and got a jukebox.
I certainly thought about that.
Two doors lead from the room to the yard on one side and a covered patio on the other.
I talked about having friends up for cookouts a hundred times, but that never happened. I never invited anyone over. I can't say why.
Anyway, the next space I'll likely be in will probably be much smaller. Basic economics suggest that's likely. There won't be room for a funny smelling couch that nobody wants to sit on or a desk nobody ever writes on.
With a little help and quite a bit of swearing, I got those bulky, clunky and heavy things down the hill to the curb. The hardest part wasn't moving them it turned out, but the parting with them.
I am ever worrying about money, and I paid good money for those things, money I could have spent on things I needed more or things I might have used better. I considered how much money I'd blown trying to make this place fit me.
So much money wasted...
I've learned. My next place won't be like that.
Not much had made the move from Charleston to Pinch and even after I bought the loveseat and chairs, the place seemed kind of empty. There was a lot of space to fill.
A few months later, I came into a little bit of money --not a lot of money --but a little. It was enough to pay my taxes, put three tires and new brakes on my recently purchased car, go on one truly epic grocery store spree (It was the only time in my life when I loaded a grocery cart and didn't think about whether I had enough in my account to cover it. We ate like princes --for a couple of days) and it bought some furniture.
It paid for a new mattress and box springs, a big heavy desk where I thought I'd finish one of my novels and an old couch I got from Habitat for Humanity.
I used the mattress and box springs every day, but nobody much liked the couch. It sat in the den, near the fireplace. Only the dogs liked to sit on it and then one of them took it in her head to occasionally water it, perhaps thinking it might grow into a sectional, and nobody wanted to sit on it.
The desk I filled with unimportant papers, various power cords to things I probably don't still own and other crap I couldn't figure out what else to do. A friend gave me a desktop computer, after I complained that I couldn't do much with this wonky, buggy laptop I'm writing on right now.
I plugged the desktop in, loaded it up with software and made a conscious effort not to hook it up to the internet: no distractions. It was simply going to be something I wrote on.
I turned it on two or three times and then buried the thing under Christmas stockings, record albums and a signed sketch by Jaime Hernandez.
As soon as I decided to put the house up on the market, I started thinking about what sort of place I'd likely find myself living in next.
Smaller.
The house is basically three bedrooms, two baths, a decent sized living room, a fairly spacious eat-in kitchen and a back room with the fireplace that's almost 1/3 the size of the rest of the place.
In another life, I imagined that room could have been used for entertaining. I might have put in a bar, a liquor cabinet and a table for poker games or other more nerdly pursuits. I might have picked up a pinball machine and got a jukebox.
I certainly thought about that.
Two doors lead from the room to the yard on one side and a covered patio on the other.
I talked about having friends up for cookouts a hundred times, but that never happened. I never invited anyone over. I can't say why.
Anyway, the next space I'll likely be in will probably be much smaller. Basic economics suggest that's likely. There won't be room for a funny smelling couch that nobody wants to sit on or a desk nobody ever writes on.
With a little help and quite a bit of swearing, I got those bulky, clunky and heavy things down the hill to the curb. The hardest part wasn't moving them it turned out, but the parting with them.
I am ever worrying about money, and I paid good money for those things, money I could have spent on things I needed more or things I might have used better. I considered how much money I'd blown trying to make this place fit me.
So much money wasted...
I've learned. My next place won't be like that.
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