Legacy

My wife of fifty three years is the dearest thing to my heart, my children and grand children close behind.  We have always been city people as circumstance more or less dictated us to be.

My wife Judith has been well aware for many a year that even though we were city dwellers, I was a country boy at heart.

She probably couldn’t count the number of times that I’d said I wished we had a nice little place in the country where I could have a good size garden and a few fruit trees.  Where we could sit on our porch and watch the sunset and listen to the night creatures start to tune up for their evening symphonies, the frogs and crickets, and hooty owls and such.

Now as she told me about how this next thing happened, I was more than a little perplexed, and quite surprised.  She said to me, Gary, I’ve the most wonderful surprise for you.  I was looking around the internet for some birthday gift ideas and accidentally got into a Real Estate Auction Site.  At that point I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear more.  But I did.

She said there was one that jumped out at me and caught my interest.  It stated “Interesting old farmhouse, great highway access, thirty acres of partially tillable land.”  There was only an hour left on the bid time and no one had bid.  Also there was no minimum bid required.  So for a lark I registered to bid and then bid one hundred dollars on it.  I swear my dear husband I was just having fun, I had no idea that it would be the only bid.  But it was.

So now we have that place in the country you always wanted, and it’s close to Fort Wayne, only fifteen miles out.  So we can still shop and go to church and all of that like we always have.

I said that’s interesting dear, show me the pictures.  She said there were no pictures, just the description.  I was getting close to thinking about having a heart attack just to make the situation more interesting.  I at that point didn’t have the heart to tell her, no picture’s is a big red flag.

Nor did I wish to expound on the catch words like “Interesting” which probably meant odd and undesirable. Nor on the words “easy access” which probably meant to close to the road.  Nor the word “partially” which probably meant very little. Also I just couldn’t be the one to say, no pictures and no other bidders is a clue.  I didn’t want to go there, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, it was obvious that we would now go look at the wonderful prize.  I was glad it was only a hundred dollars; I could probably give the property to the church and get that back on my taxes.  Or maybe hold a raffle and make a wee profit.  Some lemonade from the lemon, I was sure it would be at best.

We arrived at the address given and what we saw was definitely interesting.  It was a two story farmhouse that appeared to be very solid and well maintained.  Unfortunately it was only ten feet back from the highway.  There was a neighbor similarly positioned.  That took care of the term, ”easy access”.  Judy was starting to tear up for obvious reasons.  But I sensing that, quickly said, hey its Okay, we are having fun. That helped.

Then that neighbor whose name turned out to be Bob Wasserman came over and introduced himself.  He said you must be the new owners, I’m surprised anyone would buy it for the same reason no one would want my place.  I said and what would that be.  Bob said to close to the highway.  He said that John Horton the previous owner and he had both refused to sell out when the highway came through.  He said we were both widowers and long time occupants of our homes. We knew we wouldn’t like being right on top of the highway, where litter tosser’s can bounce it off your house.  But we both loved our homes and decided to spend our last few years in them regardless,

Bob went on to say that John had a son that lived way back East in New York.  Apparently he had no interest in the place and had it auctioned off to get rid of it with as little bother to him as possible.

My wife and I found what Bob said to be an interesting bit of history for the house.  I ask Bob about the so called fifty acres as I was having a hard time seeing where they might be.  Well now that answer hit me like a wet squirrel in the face.

Bob said the house sits on an acre and a half.  The back acre is excellent ground and many a fine garden had been there from time to time.  I said that’s well and good, what about the other forty eight and a half acres?  Bob grinned and said there are right beside my other forty eight and a half acres, and he pointed across the highway to a wooded hill. Bob said pardon my French but that’s the lay of the land.  You see when the highway came through it divided things a bit.

Now I’d like to have a house half up that hillside about three hundred feet back from the highway. I’d like that very much.  But I knew that was a pipe dream because it would take every penny from selling our in town house to pay for bulldozing out a zig zag short road up and bulldoze out a flat spot to build on. That of course would leave zip to build with.  At my age only an idiot banker would loan me enough, and I wouldn’t borrow it if I could.

Well as long as we are here I said to Judy, we might as well go in and look around, maybe I can find a souvenir of this little adventure.  The place was still furnished so I guess we bought the contents also.  However it was mostly plain and near worn out.  The house structurally was solid and well maintained inside and out.  Made it a real shame that it was ten feet in from the highway.

There were pictures sitting around that reflected the former owner and his wife.  We checked out the second floor also and at the end of the hallway Judy spotted another stairway, she exclaimed, Wow! A walk up attic; lets go look, I always liked to explore attics when I was a little girl.  I said why not, maybe there’s an old, old trunk up there which would make a nice souvenir.

Well there was a nice old trunk up there and we kept it as a souvenir.  It was the other stuff that made us gasp. No I don’t mean piles of gold or jewels.  It was a very large quantity of high end and I do mean HIGH END antiques.  Checking back with Bob we learned that John had been a prestigious antique dealer before he retired.  He must have loved the things so much he brought them here to have as keepsakes rather than auction them off.

We contacted a half a dozen big main antique auctioneers from  as many different cities.  They came out and each loaded up those most desirable in his area.  The net receipts from the auctions after commissions was a little over seven hundred thousand dollars.

Well like I said that hillside was prime for a house even though it wasn’t crop type land.  So Judy and I know have our dream place and extra money in the bank to boot. An accident of fate that turned blunder into wonder, but no ones complaining.

The farm house you say. What happened to it you ask? Well that too has a happy ending.  We gave it to a poor refugee Burmese family.  The nearness to the road was not a problem for them as they were used to that situation where they came from.  There was the man, his wife and seven children.  All hard working and most excellent gardeners.  That extra acre went a long way towards feeding that family.

And as our other neighbor back across the road, Bob reports, the Burmese are mighty fine neighbors.