Melissa, my daughter Hannah and I flew out to see the adobe house just after the ink had dried on the contracts and it was finally ours. Ours!There are times in life when big checks are written, that are accompanied by that teeth-gnashing moment when you get that sinking feeling and buyer's remorse kicks in. You know the feeling: you decide to buy the bigger model with the satellite radio with the chromium sidewalls and after the dealer cleans the crumbs out of the glove compartment and you drive it a block down the boulevard, you change your mind.
"What have I done?" you wonder, "why didn't I keep the 1966 rumpled Fiat with the see-through floor boards?"
So, as I drove the rental car off the highway and onto the tawny streets, I was gripped with panic that the property I saw for only a day or two a month before and bought with the last of my ill-gotten gains, would now look, to my eyes, like the crumbled-down, leaky old termite terrarium that everyone else who had pulled my real-estate agent away from her family dinner had seen, and rejected and walked away from in disgust.
I am happy to report this was not to be, and as Fishbee Ranch, the name we have taken to calling it, came into view, our hearts filled with simultaneous anticipation. Not only were we here, we were home.
By lunch we were opening long-closed closets, peering through spider webs and trying to figure out what to do next.
One of my agenda items was to go down to City Hall and get to know the folks. I had to talk to the planning people, the zoning people, the water people, the gas people, the electric people and the tax people. Many of them are intermingled and cross connected.
My first goal was to try and get the electricity turned on, followed by the water, and if the short four days on site were fruitful, the gas.
I knew in order to turn on the electricity I had to hammer a couple of 2 by 4s under the eaves. Since I had no tools, my Realtor and new best friend recommended a local carpenter, called him up, and next thing I knew he was pounding nails into my wobbly rafters.
With that bit behind me, I met up with the building inspector who, a month earlier, wouldn't let the power company flick the switch. Now appeased, the building inspector slapped a green sticker on my meter and told me I had 180 days to get my act together. Between those goalposts, he'd come back and snoop around and if he was happy with the results, he'd give me a "Certificate of Occupancy." Meaning, under normal circumstances, that we'd be able to set up camp inside the house. Except, technically, we'd have to have our current zoning status "commercial" adjusted to "downtown mixed-use," so we could, legally, live there.
Fishbee farm is four buildings on a half acre, one block over from the main street of a fairly sizable, if not exactly bustling, old mining town somewhere in the middle of Arizona. In my lifetime, you could go to this town, chose a place to eat, see a movie, buy a cowboy hat, fill a prescription, kick the tires on a used car, and browse a couple of curio shops.
In the ensuing years, things have changed. Nowadays, if remaining local merchants feel the urge to unlock the doors, you can get drunk in a bar, or buy booze in the drive-through liquor store and get drunk at home. You can have your nails done, get a tank of gas, visit a relative in the state penitentiary or buy a tool at one of the last real hardware stores in existence.
The once-thriving Main Street still stands, it's quaint covered sidewalks shielding pedestrians from the oppressive sun, but store after storefront, up and down the street lies fallow, empty, awaiting new ideas and entrepreneurs to bring life into down town.
Just beyond the dwindling cotton fields that once went on forever once you hit the outskirts of town, are Walmarts, K-marts, Targets and Dollar stores. You can go to giant grocery stores and shoe stores and Home Depots. Like so much of the rest of the country, these behemoths have swallowed up the Mom and Pop stores, hoovered the customers into the suburbs. Because it is easier, because it is cheaper; it doesn't come much sadder.
But our new home town, not wanting to cut off the nose of progress to spite the face of interested pioneers, is making us jump through hoops so we can restore four buildings, all of them within a section of town that is in itself a Registered National Landmark. We are taking the property to zoning, unless we want to install a “Chipotle” on the site, which would, I suspect, confuse the townspeople and upset the fervent historical preservation lobbyist who, I am delighted to report, are strong and vocal.
We'll be taking turns flying out there to make personal appearances in a series of public meetings, answering questions and with any luck, getting rezoned.
We have vowed to start sorting through the mountain of valued junk we have expertly collected over the past ten years here at Rusty Hinge Road, and at the right moment, exchange our collection of overworked snow shovels for bolo ties and head for Fishbee Ranch.
All will be welcome. BYOH (Bring Your Own Hammer).
And sunscreen.
