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.