this is not my beautiful house….

winter-camp tipi

Jenny and I were talking about cheap houses that we looked at when we were first married.

Seeing a tipi on TV was the conversation starter.

We drove up deep into Madison county and looked at a tipi that a failed commune was selling after we’d been married for a couple of months.

I guess that we must have thought that it would be a good option for a “love nest”.

It was satisfying to be able to tell our daughter, who grew up in the construction (reconstruction) project that we live in now, that it could have been a lot stranger.

She might have grown up in a tipi.

That was a good trip.

Sometimes the weirder the better is…better.

That was pretty strange.

400.00 for a tipi…it doesn’t get much cheaper than that.

The house hunting trip that really takes the prize for weirdness, though, was when we drove up into Yancey county somewhere to look at a place that was landlocked…but really cheap.

I don’t know why “cheap” was so attractive…I guess that we didn’t have any money or something.

Anyway, this place was landlocked and was a big chunk of property overlooking the river and the railroad tracks.

We drove up to the closest place we could find where we could park, got out of the old Datsun truck, and walked the half mile in on the railroad tracks to where we could scramble up the bank to where the “house” was located.

What do they say in real estate?

“Location, location, location”?

That was a pretty bad location.

It was awkward to walk a half mile on the tracks to get to our house.

I’m glad that it never became “our house”.

That would have been really crazy.

It would have reflected badly on other people’s estimation of our sanity.

It was kind of pretty and memorably weird though to walk along the river on those railroad tracks and then look out at all the scenery from the windowless rooms of the shack that someone had the nerve to call a house in a free classified.

It would never be a mansion on a hill.

It wouldn’t have made a good chicken coop…and I’ve found that chickens are very flexible in their choice of accommodations.

The pile of trash that was down the bank was bigger than the old shack that overlooked it.

I guess that at some point we figured out that a half-acre that we could do something with was better than a hundred cheap acres that were impossible to get to.

The funny thing is that now you don’t see as many cheap/weird places for sale as you used to.

That’s pretty entertaining to look at some of these places….and they’re getting harder to find.

Maybe I’m not looking as hard?

Why should I? We’ve got a place already.

Wait!! WE’RE BUYING ANOTHER CHEAP, WEIRD PLACE!! I DID FIND ANOTHER CHEAP/WEIRD PLACE!!

WE’RE THE WINNER!!

Trying to buy…the deal isn’t done quite yet.

Trying to buy.

The optimism and blind vision is astounding…or is that “sheer vision”?

At least there’s not a half mile of tracks between me and this new place.

It should be alright.

“Mansion on the Hill” Bruce Springsteen

About Peter Rorvig

I'm a non-practicing artist, a mailman, a husband, a father...not listed in order of importance. I believe that things can always get better....and that things are usually better than we think.

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