The Big Guns

I got out the big guns. I’m not talking about my real gun. I hate that thing. I want to get rid of it. I have no idea what it is—a shotgun, a rifle… I keep getting the two of them mixed up. I keep having to say, “Kurt, what do we have again?” when I want to tell someone about it. The only reason I got the stupid thing was because of the Evils. The cops couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do anything, so after I got hit with the hammer, I went down to Walmart and got the gun. I filled out some paperwork. It took fifteen minutes. The next thing you knew I was wheeling it out to my car in a shopping cart next to the macaroni-and-cheese, and some kind of ammunition—buckshot, bullets, I don’t know—was in the seat up front where babies usually sit.

One of the church ladies sent her husband over to show me how to shoot it. It nearly knocked me off my feet even though I lift fifty pound bags of grain on a regular basis and push wheelbarrows full of manure, dirt, rocks, you name it, every morning. But it’s been almost five years now and the Evils are long out of the picture and the gun has been sitting in the closet making me nervous… under the bed making me nervous… in the attic making me nervous... One time I put it in the extra refrigerator out in the garage but that made me nervous too because what if we get a thief who’s hungry? Plus I had no place to store the beer and hot dog rolls when summer came. Then I read about some guy who was moving to New Jersey and he got arrested on the New Jersey Turnpike because he was transporting his gun in a locked suitcase underneath boxes of china, dish towels and the toaster oven in the trunk of his car. So I’d like to get rid of it.

Anyway, I’m not talking about the real gun. I’m talking about something even more powerful. It’s so powerful that I almost told the seller of the winery house about it when she called to see if I had sold the farm yet. It appears that someone else is interested in the winery house and they want to make an offer but it’s also contingent upon them selling their property and I think she wanted to make sure that I was still interested before she told them no. Yes I’m still interested! We’ve asked for a house-selling contingency but they never responded! I assured her that my farm should sell quickly. I told her I have people coming from other states to see it. I told her to go look at my website so she could see for herself that my farm is beautiful and it’s priced right and it should sell in a timely manner. I told her that I just put it on Realtor.com. Then I almost told her about the statue.

It’s a St. Joseph statue, about three inches high, cream-colored plastic, and would look good next to Mary in the manger if you were missing Joseph. It could even fill in for one of the Wise Men if you were in a pinch. But he’s really for burying in the yard like a dog buries a bone. Or a pirate buries treasure. They say that if you’re trying to sell a house and you bury St. Joseph in the front yard, it’ll sell fast. You would think that the only thing selling is the St. Joseph statues themselves. They are all over eBay and for sale on websites with names like Good Fortune For You. But they work. I can vouch for that! This is the third St. Joseph I’m burying. It worked when I was selling the Oklahoma house and that was a tough house to sell because it was the second highest priced property for sale in the county in an area that was very depressed. It sold for the full asking price in two weeks to a cash buyer with no contingencies—no mortgage, no appraisal, no inspection, nothing. And then we practically had a bidding war but we were already in contract. People were coming out of the woodwork begging me to buy that place!

It worked for the Ferrum house with the Evils next door. No one thought I was going to get out of there alive. But that house sold in two months. It took a little longer. That’s because I had to do it very quietly—I couldn’t let the Evils know. I didn’t even put a for-sale sign on the lawn because if they got wind that I was selling, they would have done something to sabotage the sale. Both of those sales, like this one, were for-sale-by-owner. For-sale-by-owners aren’t easy when conditions are good. They’re almost impossible when conditions are bad. In this case, it’s the economy.

So I ordered another St. Joseph. You’re supposed to dig it up and take it with you when you sell the house but it’s so windy out in Oklahoma, any tell-tale marks in the yard where I had buried it were blown away and after digging the fifth hole with a kitchen spoon because everything was packed already and finding nothing but worms and a bottle cap, I gave up and left him there. Ferrum, I was so happy to get out of there I’m lucky I didn’t leave Kurt, never mind the statue. I wonder how many St. Joseph statues excavators will find in the future? I can just picture happy homeowners on their hands and knees, digging in the garden and finding St. Joseph. “What’s this Honey?” They stand up with a hand on a hip and blow the dirt off. Squinting, they hold it up. “It appears to be a religious artifact of some sort,” one of them speculates.

The thing came with a little plastic bag and directions. You’re supposed to bury him inside the bag, upside down, facing the street. It seems kind of mean putting him in the dirt head first, but that’s what it says to do. You have your choice of prayers. I said both of them. I figured if one is good, two is better. The horses hung their heads over the fence watching me. Effie went by in her old turquoise pickup truck. She tapped the horn. She probably thought I was planting spring bulbs.

When I was finished, I decided to do some weeding. You never know when someone will want to look at the place so you have to keep it up. You have to be ready. I weeded the flower beds. I weeded the vegetable garden. Then I got some mulch.

Later, when I went in the house there was a call on the machine from someone asking about the farm. It doesn’t mean anything. But you never know.

Things I've Learned in Virginia

1. If the wheelbarrow starts going down the hill really fast and you’re losing control, just drop it and hold on. You’ll skid a couple of feet and then stop. If it’s a really steep hill and you’re heading for something you’d prefer not to crash into—a tree, the pond, the manure pile—just drop it, hold on, and sit. That should do it. (Spray & Wash is not necessarily going to take all the orange out of the seat of your pants.)

2. Do not park a full wheelbarrow laterally on a path that zigzags down a hill because it will fall over the minute you take your hand off the handle to scratch your nose and all your hard work will go tumbling down to the bottom and you will say F-it and leave it there. Park straight, facing down.

3. All these years I’ve been eating rutabagas, not turnips. I’m still traumatized over that. My whole life my mother said they were turnips. When I confronted her about this deception, she acted all nonchalant, like it was no big deal. “Yeah? So? They’re really rutabagas. We just call them turnips.” She didn’t care one iota when I told her how embarrassed I was when I bragged to Pearl about my delicious family recipe for mashed turnips and she informed me, “Why Debi, them aren’t turnips at all. You’re getting your root vegetables all mixed up, bless your heart.”

4. When someone says “Bless your heart,” that means you’re a moron.

5. The mayor is not actually a crazy person who runs amok, crashing through fences all over town, trampling people’s lawns and gardens like a madman. The mayor is a mare, Wesley Bell’s sorrel broodmare who thinks the grass is greener on the other side of the fence and can’t be kept contained because the minute the electric fence goes out, she knows it.

6. Electric fences go out on a regular basis in Virginia. Or in the country, of which Virginia is mostly, agriculture being our number one industry. Of course some mortgage lenders (Fairway Independent Mortgage Corporation) refuse to make loans on homes in agricultural areas even though we gave them all that money to do so--check out my story Bad News--in effect discriminating against country folks. But that is neither here nor there. The point is, the electric goes out in Virginia regularly and most people have generators. Some have them hardwired into their houses, it happens so often. We’ve been lucky; it’s only happened to us a couple of times and not for long so I’ve never had the chance to pull the generator out. And Kurt would have to be home if I did need it because I have no idea what to do. But I have it just in case. It’s next to the power washer, which we also don’t use.

7. In addition to generators, people in Virginia also have scanners. They listen to the calls that come in to the fire house or first aid in the beginning of winter when everyone is firing up their woodstoves for the first time and they didn’t get them cleaned first. Or when someone calls the ambulance for Brandy Hinkle because she took too many prescription drugs again, all those popular ones you see on TV, because she has nothing better to do than invent aches and pains because she’s bored out of her mind since she refuses to work or go to school and she got married when she was eighteen-years-old to someone else who refuses to work or go to school. It’s a vicious cycle over there and the only excitement is when the ambulance comes. As far as the cops, you rarely hear anything on the scanner about them. At least in these parts. Well, other than the occasional shooting. Because everyone has guns around here. Pearl keeps a portable scanner right in her breast pocket like a pack of cigarettes just so she can stay on top of things. If there’s anything I need to know, she calls me.

8. Bobcats mating sound suspiciously like women being murdered. That’s when I called the cops.

9. Tall grass is hay.

10. Baptist churches have white people.

11. Handy things. Like how to give shots, clean sheaths, stack hay, bake pies, and grow vegetables, all things I used to pay someone else to do in New Jersey. But I still can’t put new string in the weed-whacker. And I don’t know how to start that generator.

12. Just because there are old farmhouses all over the place doesn’t mean I am going to find anything good at garage sales. This is the hardest place for garage saling with the exception of Oklahoma. The people will not part with their old stuff or they have incredible patience and will sit around till the cows come home waiting for the right person to come along who will overpay for a jadeite sugar bowl because they’ve been looking for that exact piece for ten years. Either way, you will find Fisher Price toys, NASCAR collectibles, VCRs that don’t work, baskets, old shoes, brass fixtures and stained Tupperware at garage sales but no Roseville unless you want to pay an arm and a leg.

13. Testicles on dogs are the norm. When I first moved down here and started seeing all the testicles, it was so weird to me I might as well have been seeing dogs with antennas coming out of their heads. Some people actually think they’re going to make money breeding dogs, but the real reason is they just want to get some puppies because they’re cute. But they don’t think they’re cute enough to warrant a trip down to the local dog pound to save one, and certainly not cute enough to stop adding to the mess. Thousands and thousands of dogs get put to sleep in Virginia every year and even more cats.

14. They sell liver-and-onions at the local restaurant down here. It’s a buffet-style place called Chitwood’s Home Cooking and the last time I was in there, the whole pan was scarfed up faster than the one that contained the marshmallow salad. I couldn’t believe my eyes. People actually choose liver-and-onions? I thought liver-and-onions was something mean old aunts gave to kids in the 1950s and the kids spit it out when no one was looking. I thought liver-and-onions went out of style with kerchiefs and aprons.

15. Speaking of meat, people claim they hunt deer for the meat. To put food on the table. Trying to be open-minded, I tasted it. It tasted like crap. They say that’s because it wasn’t prepared right. It has to be cooked just right. Anything that has to be cooked just right to be edible is crap. And if it’s so good, why doesn’t Walmart sell it? Why isn’t it flying off the shelves down there? Why isn’t it in a stainless steel pan next to the liver-and-onions down at Chitwood’s? Because it’s crap.

16. Bulls are the boy cows who can mate. Steers are boy cows who are castrated like what should be happening to all the dogs around here. Heifers are the girl cows. I’m still not sure what that thingy is that’s hanging from their bellies. Is it a penis or is it something to do with the bellybutton? And you can’t go by the horns. Both boys and girls—sometimes they have them, sometimes they don’t. Hence, I can’t tell a boy cow from a girl cow.

Recalculating

If I learned anything out of this nightmare, it’s that Kurt and I have no patience. We don’t have to move. We were only moving because I’m homesick. But now we’re busting to get out of here. Busting I tell you! Yes, not finding out the buyer couldn’t get her mortgage until two days before the closing caused everything to be in an upheaval. It caused financial difficulties, logistical problems, lost opportunities and at the least, it inconvenienced everyone. But that’s not the reason that we suddenly have to get out of here like the place is on fire.

It’s like being in a car crash. You’re going 60 miles per hour; suddenly, you hit a wall. Screech! Boom! The car stops but you keep going. It goes against the forces of nature to stay in your seat like nothing happened and the broker tells your buyer, “Look for another house—it was probably a blessing in disguise,” like you can just turn the station on the radio or readjust your GPS. Like it’s nothing. Like there’s something not great about your house! But you’re already in motion. So what was once going to be a leisurely exercise—we had been planning to hunker down for the winter—has turned into a lesson about patience. I’ve learned we don’t have any. Coming to a screeching halt makes me crazy to find a way around this detour.

And there’s no reason. Jersey is still going to be there when we find another buyer. The winery house might even still be there. Who is going to buy that thing? You can’t get a C.O., you can’t get a mortgage, I just found out right before all this happened that you can’t even insure it. It’s as as-is, as as-is gets, and nothing is hooked up so you can’t test or inspect anything. Who else is going to have the gonads to take a chance that when they buy that house, they don’t get in there and discover that the septic is shot or the well water is polluted? How many Debi-and-Kurts are there out there?

(The seller obviously believes she is going to sell that house because she refused to give us a house-selling contingency.)

Plus, the good part is we don’t have to move in the dead of winter. Can you imagine, moving a whole farm and a business (not to mention the kid) to another state and to a house with no heat in freezing temperatures and then trying to build some sort of horse shelter and fencing in a three-week period while there is snow on the ground? We’re crazy I tell you!

Maybe Bill is right. Maybe this is a blessing in disguise. For me. Not my buyers. They won’t find a place that’s better than this, in this price range. Someday, when they look back, they will be kicking themselves that they didn’t try harder to make this deal happen. Me? I’m going to recalculate and turn left at the next sunny day. The riding arena is just waiting out there and if I am patient enough, maybe, just maybe, I’ll hear my mother’s voice again.

The End of the Trail

The people who came to see the house this morning, loved it. Funny, they’re from New Jersey and that’s where we’re going. I don’t know if they’re going to buy it. They’re looking at a dozen other properties while they are down here. No property is perfect. In this price range, I know they won’t find something that has it all so it depends on what’s most important to them. The drawback to this place is we only have one bathroom. For me, even with the irritable bladder, that wasn’t as important to me as having real horse facilities. There were a lot of things that were more important to me. You can always make a bathroom. But I don’t know what they’ll decide. They did say I raised the bar.

Oh, but what a pain getting all ready again! I knew enough not to start packing just in case the deal fell through and I’d have to start showing the place again. I figured I’d pack while Kurt was up at the winery house getting the electric and heat on and all that. But I had to do some things. So I spent the last two days putting it back together—putting the cross-ties back up, stuffing things back into the attic, rehanging pictures, unrolling the sisal rug we keep under the table on the deck and unfolding the chairs… Staging. And cleaning. I’m a clean freak but when you’re selling a house and you only have one chance to make a first impression, it’s got to be flawless. Kurt went out on the trails with the tractor and manicured them. He cleaned up all the things in the garage he had prepared to take with him to New Jersey and he parked the farm truck in the back. We made phone calls to people to let them know we’re still in business and canceled people who were waiting, like the movers, homeowner’s insurance people, etc. I had to call the hay lady to see if she still had that hay she had asked if I wanted. Also, I’ve been reviewing and relisting all our house-selling ads and contacting people who inquired. Stuff like that. Now we start the process all over again.

I don’t have any hopes for my buyer coming through. Though she signed a contract agreeing to make every effort to obtain a mortgage, and though she has a down payment, high income, excellent credit and stable jobs, she says she’s not qualified when I tell her about other loan programs I’ve found out about. I don’t know how hard she has been trying. I don’t know if she has been frantically digging online, researching USDA loans and FHA rules and contacting other mortgage brokers like Kurt and I have. Heck, it seems like my online friends are doing more digging! If she’s scrambling, she’s not telling me about it. It looks like it’s over. I think it’s the end of the trail.

We’ve asked the owner of the winery house to give us a house-selling contingency but it’s been a few days now and no answer.

I know we’ll sell this place sooner or later. Spring is coming and it’s gorgeous here in the spring—flowers blooming everywhere, birds singing… We weren’t expecting to sell it so fast anyway. We’d planned to hunker down for the winter. I was surprised I was getting bites on it to begin with. It was the ugliest time of year and we were getting action! Of course I had to tell everybody that we were under contract. At least two people who were interested have already bought a house. That makes me mad. But I know that sooner or later it will go.

All my friends, all my blog buddies, have been so good. Screaming for me, feeling for me, coming up with ideas. I just wish I had my mother. I do think she spoke to me. It was when I was picking up manure in the field. That’s when I do my best thinking. It’s peaceful. It’s dead quiet except for the occasional horse snort and I put the pitchfork down, stop to look at the mountains behind Pearl and Eldon’s field…

All of a sudden I heard my mother say, “It’s all going to work out even better Debi.” It was like she was standing right next to me, whispering in my ear. Either I’m going crazy because I’ve had one bad thing after another happen since we left New Jersey and I’m so frazzled that I’m hearing things. Or my mother really is on my shoulder. Either way, a sense of peace fell over me.

Bad News

Bad news. Our buyer couldn’t get her mortgage. Two days before closing. Not because of her credit. Not because of her income. Not because of the appraisal. All of that was fine. It was because of something totally ridiculous. We’re zoned agricultural. And I guess FHA doesn’t give out loans for property in rural areas.

My buyer can’t get a conventional loan—she’d need a 20% down payment and she doesn’t have it. FHA requires less money down. She’s not selling her house to buy this one, which is what most people to do to come up with that kind of money, in this case, about $52,000. Her house is a doublewide that needs some work and she was going to sell it later, at her leisure. This enabled her to give us thirty days to vacate the premises, a big plus when you’re moving a whole farm to another state and to a fixer-upper. Everyone was happy.

In the beginning of this process, what I was worried about was the house appraising for the proper price. It’s a tricky property because it’s a horse farm and comps are hard to find. I called the buyer’s banker, Bill Reynolds from Fairway Independent Mortgage Corporation, to make sure he was aware of this. I asked him to send an appraiser who was familiar with horse properties and who would understand the value of a real horse property and not compare it to a house with ten acres and a shed out back. I stressed this was a turnkey working horse farm. So he was aware of the nature of the property from the beginning.

But he let it go all the way to closing. And now everybody’s lives are in upheaval. I can’t tell you how this has screwed up so many people in time and money. One example is how Bill made us put in electric heaters upstairs, even though it is warmer up there than it is downstairs. That cost us five hundred dollars. It was totally unnecessary but we figured if that’s what they wanted, we would do it. How about how we had to stop work because we’re supposed to be leaving and now we don’t have jobs? What about the seller up in Jersey who is in financial hardship and is counting on us to close on Tuesday? I could give you dozens of examples how this has hurt us and other people. It’s just too long and upsetting to write.

My buyer was so upset she asked me if we could change the zoning. I said I didn’t think so but I would call the zoning department just in case. The zoning officer couldn’t believe it either. She said most of the county is zoned A1—agricultural, and single house dwellings are permitted. In fact, most of the state is zoned agricultural. Agriculture is our number one industry! FHA only gives out loans to people in cities? If that is true, Bill doesn’t know the products he is selling because he knew this was a horse property from the beginning.

And now I may lose the winery house because of all this. I have some other people interested in the farm, and I know that I’ll sell it sooner or later, in fact, I had a drive-by yesterday, and I have somebody coming over on Friday, but to go through this whole process all over again… it just might take too long and the winery house will be gone.

Of course I should have known the bank would screw it up. Just like they screwed up the whole country.

A Scary House

We put our house on the market in September, for-sale-by-owner, and sold it in December. This is the fifth house we sold ourselves and I expected this one to take a little longer, due to the economy, but it went about as fast as the last one did. In fact, we were planning to hunker down for the winter because fall is not a good time to start marketing a property, but it flew off the shelf.

Now we had to find something to move to. This was going to be the hard part. We wanted something old; it had to have acreage for the horses; it had to be close to family, work, and barrel racing, which are in all different directions; it couldn’t be on a busy road or near power lines; and it had to be around $200,000. In Jersey. And we only had two days to do it. We had to get back home because of the animals. The animals is one reason why I want to move back to Jersey. It’s too hard leaving them every time we have to go up there for the holidays or a wedding, or like the last time, my mother’s funeral.

This time we went up there for Christmas. And to find a house. In a blizzard. We weren’t expecting a blizzard. We didn’t even know there was going to be snow and I didn’t bring any of my functional farm-wear because I wanted to look good; I didn’t want my family to say, “What the hell happened to Debi down there? She’s a mess!” So I brought clothes that looked good but weren’t good for trudging around in the snow. Jersey clothes. Form over function.

And I can hear my sister’s words if she’s reading this: “What do you mean you’re not a mess? You most certainly are a mess!” See, I told you. You’ll know what a northerner is thinking because she’ll tell you. And somehow I feel comforted by this, even if it’s not what I’d like to hear.

The first house that we looked at was a turn-of-the-century Victorian that had once been a winery. Our hearts started thumping as soon as we saw it. We parked in the street with our flashers on because the house was vacant so no one was there to shovel and we couldn’t see where the driveway was. If there was a driveway. We climbed through knee-deep snow in sneakers to get to the front door, surrounded by yellow clapboards with peeling paint and wires dangling from the ceiling where a porch light once hung.
The cops arrived to investigate why an out-of-state truck was parked out in the street. Someone called. They thought we were casing the joint. Hey, this is Jersey!


We loved the house but it was scary. It wasn’t because of the ghosts. Supposedly there are ghosts in the house. A woman and a girl. But it wasn’t that. It was the work. Talk about a mess. There was no electric, heat, or plumbing. It was colder inside the house than it was outside. We were so cold and it was so dark, we couldn’t really examine anything and when I had to pee, I had to go outside in the snow. My fingers were frozen, my toes were frozen and my butt was frozen. We looked at each other. Heartbroken. It was too much for us. Then we looked at other houses.

But we couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was crazy if we got that house! It was risky! It was reckless! It didn’t even have enough acres. We could squeeze those horses in. The taxes were high. We’ll be making a lot more money in Jersey. It’ll cost an arm and a leg to heat. We’ll get a woodstove. What if the septic is broke? Septic shmeptic. Oh, what we could do if we had a house like that! The possibilities were endless. And so we went back to see it again with the only pair of boots we could find since all the shelves in all the stores in New Jersey were wiped clean and luckily I have big feet because no one wanted the size eleven.

We brought my father back the second time. I could tell he loved it as much as we did. He asked, “Did you see that movie The Money Pit?” But he didn’t actually say, “Don’t buy it.”


In truth, if you really look at the situation, it’s not as bad as it appears.
The worst was over. All the demolition. All the messy and expensive stuff. The owners had gutted it down to the studs and put in all new wiring, plumbing and insulation. They put in new windows and two hundred-and-forty-something sheets of drywall, curving it where it had been originally curved, saving all the molding and salvaging all the architectural details.
They put in new heat. They stripped all the hardwood floors. Then it looked like someone just put his tools down, went out to lunch and never came back. Nothing was done. Wires were hanging out of holes in the walls and ceilings waiting to be hooked up to outlets and switches and lights; the toilets were in the bathrooms with the labels still on the bowls connected to nothing; the cabinets were in boxes on the floor in the kitchen and the sewer pipe went to nowhere.


But, when scrutinizing it and rationalizing why we should have this house, we realized that any house we bought in our price range would need new cabinets and new floors and new electric. They always do. We know that from experience. It can be the cutest house, the most adorable, well-kept thing on the block and we’ll think we lucked out and we don’t have to do anything but paint and move in. Then when we get in there we discover, even though we got an inspection (like the Ferrum house) and even though it’s brand new (like the Oklahoma house), the roof is leaking or it needs a new well or the heat doesn’t work or the septic is on its last legs, usually all of the above. The only thing is, it wouldn’t be scary. You could go in and turn on the lights and it would be deceptively warm and nice because everything would be up and running. But we’d have to fix all the same things we’d have to fix in the winery house. Sooner or later. Besides, we didn’t like any of the other houses. They were 1980’s tract houses, houses on highways, modulars with popcorn ceilings, cracker boxes and shit boxes and houses that didn’t melt my butter.


So we bought the winery house.

Going Home

I haven’t been able to write about the houses because I’m afraid I’ll jinx myself. I guess I’m really superstitious. I avoid walking under ladders and I do knock on wood, using my head if there’s no available oak or pine. But now it looks like everything’s going to go through so I think I’m safe. Knock wood.

I’d been out of Jersey for seven years but it took my mother dying for me to get homesick. That’s the reason I’m going back. People assume it’s because of work. It’s not, though I expect it to be better up there. I miss my peeps.

And I don’t feel welcome here. I’m a Yankee.

At first I was in denial. I even wrote a story about it, Yankees and White Lies. But once I started analyzing my feelings about why I had this sudden urge to get out of here like the room was on fire (was this just grief?), I realized that I was not imagining being disliked and sometimes discriminated against by the people who didn’t know me and I was tired of it! I’m great! I want to be where people appreciate me and even if we are different, even if we have a difference of opinion, even if we vote differently (egad!), we can still be friends. We can still tolerate each other.

The fact is, I don’t feel safe here. Admittedly, part of it is because of what we went through with the Evils. But the other part is because I am different. And that’s a no-go in the south. I warned Kelly not to tell anyone that we go to the Unitarian church—they won’t like it down here and I didn’t want her to start getting picked on. I was afraid to put a bumper sticker for Obama on my truck—afraid the truck would get keyed the next time I was in Walmart. I hesitate to admit I think gays should be able to get married just like everyone else.

I was even told that my grandchildren will never belong here. A friend of mine informed me that if Kelly has children, they will never be considered “from here,” even if they are born here, because their grandparents are from the wrong side of the Mason Dixon Line. Even when I pointed out that her ancestors were from Europe—that was different—she made sure I knew that my future grandchildren would never belong. I’m a Yankee and all my kin, forty years from now, fifty years from now, doesn’t matter, will be Yankees. This was my friend.

So I’m going home to a place that, ironically, has a reputation for mean people but where I’ve never been assaulted, robbed, vandalized, harassed, or had my dogs poisoned like what happened in Ferrum, and where I’ve never paid a higher price than what someone else paid because of the way I speak, like what happens here all the time. When they hear my accent and figure out where I’m from, they either charge me higher prices than my neighbor because they don’t like me or because they think I’ve got money. Either way, I get ripped off left and right down here.

Sometimes I think I was meant to be here for a while so I can truly understand what black people go through when they complain they were stopped for walking down the road or couldn’t get a job simply because they were black. I used to think, “Ah, get over it. Stop being paranoid.” Now I’m rethinking the matter. Now I’ve got a taste of it and I know what they’re talking about. Only they can’t change their skin and I can go home.

To be clear, I am not saying that everyone is bad down here. Just like all Yankees are not bad, but some are, all southerners are not bad. I’ve met some wonderful people—Becky and Claudia the writers, my other writer friends and blog buddies, too many to mention, some nice horse people, my German girlfriend Tanja, the nice folks who own Blair’s store, Effie, Olivia, Dee-Dee my seamstress, George my farrier, the Johnsons—I could go on and on. But best of all my neighbors, Pearl and Eldon. They have been a bright spot in my life, teaching me how to garden, bringing me pies, bringing Kelly to Dairy Queen and choir, taking care of my animals when we had to go to New Jersey because my mother was sick—they’ve been the closest thing to family that I have here. I can’t even talk to them about moving because Pearl and I start crying. I’m really going to miss them.

But I am busting with excitement because I am going home. We sold this farm and we bought another one. You won’t believe how we did it all and what we are up against next. It is crazy with a capital C. And now that it looks like it’s all going through, knock wood, I’m going to catch you up.