Sunday, January 10, 2010

TRASH- AND EXCREMENT-FILLED COHOCTAH FARM IS OUR DREAM HOUSE

grange/grānj/
noun
1. a farm, with its farmhouse and nearby buildings.
2. Chiefly British. a country house with its various farm buildings, usually constituting the dwelling of a yeoman or gentleman farmer.
3. Archaic. a barn or granary.

I figure if Scarlett O’Hara's house can have a name, so can mine. My uncle claimed that Bradley Lott, who built the farm back in 1902 or so, had named it Sunnylawn Grange. I have not been able to determine if this is in fact the case, but I like to think so.

The barn was built first, and the house was built over two years or so using a contraption bought from Sears Roebuck and Co. The concrete blocks were produced with their Wizard block making machine. Using this machine, you could make 50-70 blocks a day. The blocks necessary for the average basement would take nearly four weeks to make. Sears advertised the homes produced with this miraculous machine as “almost identical in appearance with hand finished stoned…(and)…more sanitary than the average house.” I try to keep this in mind when I recall the condition of the house when we first saw it.

My great-grandparents on both sides of my family were farmers, and I loved playing in the barns and fields when we visited them. My maternal grandmother, who was raised on the farm, could not wait to get away from there. She wanted nothing more to do with slopping hogs, gathering eggs, or weeding the garden. I, however, could think nothing I wanted more. I was nearly fifty years old when I finally had the opportunity to “buy the farm.”

I love to look at those real estate magazines that are always so strategically placed right inside the supermarket doorway. I can sit for hours paging through them, imagining how I could make this or that house my own. So one day I came home from the Village Market with one of them in the sack with my groceries. After I put the groceries away I sat down at the kitchen table to look for my dream house. Now, mind you, my husband and I were not looking to buy a house. We already had a perfectly good house.

The houses that always get my attention are the older ones, built well before I was born and usually needing a little attention. I am not afraid of hard work. On this particular day, the ad that jumped off the page at me with big bold letters said “Diamond in the Rough.” It was a big old farm house, listed for sale with 15 acres. The price was too good to be believed, so I convinced my husband that we should go out and see it. He is a sucker for my enthusiasm so he agreed to go along.

I contacted the Realtor and we made an appointment to meet at the house. My husband and I got there first. It was a cold day in March, about a foot of snow covering the ground. Even this much snow could not hide the amount of junk laying around the yard. There was a dog pen next to the driveway, its  several occupants barking furiously as we exited the car. Two barns in serious need of repair loomed ahead of us, doors wide open (were you born in a barn?).

The Realtor pulled into the driveway and introduced herself. We made small talk as we walked up to the side porch. Broken concrete steps led to the door. As she put her hand on the door knob, she said “remember, it needs a lot of work.”

The first thing I noticed was the overpowering smell of urine. A stack of dog crates with little yapping dogs in them seemed to be the source. The kitchen was full of dirty dishes, garbage on the floor, cabinets missing doors, and a cat sleeping in a bowl in the cupboard.

We walked from room to room in utter amazement. There was not a door hanging on its hinges in any room except one (the bathroom). What had once been beautiful wood trim had been partly painted or just flat out  ripped off the door or window frame. The wood floors were scratched and uneven. The upstairs bedrooms had some sort of horrible textured material on the ceilings, evidently to hide some plaster damage. One closet seemed to have been used as a bathroom at one time, sporting the remains of a toilet, peeling wallpaper and a fine crop of cobwebs. There were little piles of dog shit in every room, and the baseboards all had drip marks on them. I could easily guess what had made them.

We went to the barn and peered inside. It was full, and I do mean full, of raw garbage, broken furniture, ancient farm equipment, and cats. The hillside behind the barn was also covered with garbage, bagged at one time, but now spilling out onto the landscape.

The Realtor did her level best to play up the finer points of the property. She told us that several people were definitely interested in buying it. Her mouth seemed to be a little pinched at the corners and I couldn’t help wondering if she was struggling not to laugh as she made these outrageous claims.

We told the Realtor that we would think about it and contact her. When we got into the car we looked at each other and started to laugh. “What the hell?” said my husband.

“Who would try to sell a house in that condition?” I said to him.

Looking back as my husband turned out of the driveway, I knew it my heart that I would live in that house.


No comments:

Post a Comment