No Trespassing, Private Property
We were in the car for 8 hours. By the end, the kids and the parents were ready to be on solid ground. We found the right drive way, pulled in, and realized we were at the wrong driveway.
We turned around and got stuck in the mud! We aren’t used to driving our new minivan with front wheel drive instead of our previous SUV with all wheel drive or our truck with 4 wheel drive. We are out in the middle of no where and with no one to call we have to get resourceful.
We went scrounging for sticks, rocks, grabbed a few diapers from the back of the van and made our own traction. Between the debris and Pauls arms like rockets, we got out of there.
Up until now, both Paul and I had a good feeling about this property. Our realtors told us if a property checks 75-80% of our boxes, we should go for it because it’s very unlikely that a property would check every single box. But this place did…
a free flowing spring
relatively flat, for North Carolina
close enough to civilization
easy access
power already established
septic and well installed
But there’s one problem. There is crap everywhere. I don’t mean just a little messy. This place hasn’t been touched in at least 10 years, maybe more! Save for the little pathways that are being mowed, I guess so they could sell it easier? I’m not sure, really.
The main house looks like an episode from hoarders. There is a massive, literally the size of a basket ball, hornets nest on the front porch, or what used to be a front porch. At the side entrance the door is open, showing off the stacked furniture on boxes and papers of who knows what. When you go around back, you can see that the wood stove caught half the house on fire leaving behind a charred mess of melted black. Honestly, I don’t know how or why the whole thing didn’t just burn to the ground. But there is still some caution tape wrapped around a few trees left to flat in the wind.
There’s a barn type structure that has a melted bag of degraded trash in, on, and around it. Yet another few structures look this way as well but also have things like stacked lumber, chicken crates, maybe a few chains and ropes, a chair or two, a ladder, and the rest is unrecognizable.
There are some interesting looking cages that could have been for dogs, maybe chickens or rabbits; but their eeriness makes you think about the last horror film you saw.
There is another house on the top part of the property but it’s falling in on itself. Quite literally. Paul opened the door and there was a hole showing the ground just through the threshold.
But the best part is exactly what you cannot see. The pasture. The garden. The berry bushes. And then as we are driving away I see an old cabin tucked away behind 10 foot tall trees and shrubs.
We left the property feeling a huge mix of emotions but mostly just tired. We found a place to sit down, eat, and drink a nice cold beer.
Paul and I talked a little about the property but we were so tired, I’m not sure our brains had much room to talk through what we just saw.
We managed to leave the restaurant without too much fuss. Lincoln was watching PBS on my phone and Sydney was half asleep already.
On our way out, we held the door open for a family that had sat behind us. As we started to walk towards our car we hear “Boiler Up!”.
“Hammer Down!” my brain instinctively hollered.
Paul and I both had on a Purdue t-shirt, completely unplanned. So we turned to greet our fellow Boilermakers. We learned they were from The Region (the area by Chicago but technically still Indiana also near Purdue University). They were in town scattering the man’s mothers ashes on the Blue Ridge Parkway, his hometown.
We talked for a minute. Why we were in town. How much we liked it here. How they love the area but were called to Indiana for their own reasons.
We soon parted ways and said our goodbyes. And because we were both from the Midwest, it took us about as long as the entire conversation just to say goodbye.
Driving into the parking lot at our hotel, we saw them again. And again at breakfast the next morning. They were headed back to Indiana but we said our hellos, our goodbyes, well wishes, and safe travels.
Our decision to uproot and move hundreds of miles away from our friends, family, and community had brought its own wave of emotions. We know we are being called here, to North Carolina. But we are also sad, and scared, and worried.
Paul and I didn’t have to talk about the property because we knew we were in love with it. We knew we were going to put in an offer and hope the universe is on the same page as us. We have yet to know the outcome of that offer, but the way we ended our final, real, goodbye with that family at that restaurant in that town made everything feel so much better.
“It’s always a small world when you’re sporting Purdue”
It’s funny how, no matter where we go it still feels like a small world. We are comforted by the unknown common ground of a stranger. The easy conversations about life out here or over there.
BOILER UP, HAMMER DOWN.
