How We Got Here

The Internet is to blame. Before it arrived, daydreams were just that and idle hopes shared late into the night would lose their shape when daylight and sobriety returned.

Now, the casually mentioned thought of one day living in an historic home [not just an old home, an old home with history] is an easy thing to chase with the butterfly net of a computer. Add to that the need for space, for open sky, for peace and quiet, for fertile soil, for barnyard animals. The sum of these things can only be one thing and that would be an historic farm.

And where does one go to find an historic farm? One within driving distance to work and airport and family and friends and restaurants and theaters? It is easy to see how this small seed of a dream could lie dormant for ever and ever. That is, it would be easy to see how that might happen without the Internet.

Oh, it's still not easy. But given a computer and enough wasted hours when one should probably be working and, well, any number of needles can be found in a given haystack.

And so a small picture of a down-at-heel farmhouse not so very far away and the phrase "... such a well preserved farm complex is very rare..." can lead to a leisurely drive on a Sunday.

"Let's just go look. What can it hurt just to go see it?"

From the road, the house would appear pretty but well-worn. The broad pasture in front was off-set by the dormant trees and the rising hills behind the house. A curving gravel drive can be a seductive thing. Certainly a change from the short asphalt driveway from our intown house and its shallow front yard.

We parked on the east side, as we always will. A noble granite and found-stone chimney. Return cornice molding. The evidence of the dogtrot. Everything as it was and will always be. Perhaps the best way to view a house is with cupped hands, face pressed against windowpanes. The view is just enough to want more, more, more. Where does that door lead and what might lie beyond that door? It was love.

We can tell you what it can hurt to go see such a property. Your own house seems small and inadequate. The beautiful garden you left just and hour or two before seems small. Certainly, it's not a pasture with imaginary sheep and goats. We have no creek here, no big open sky, no stone fireplace, no mountain.

Suddenly, we are having an affair. On our perfectly lovely home.

So an appointment was set with the realtor. Imaginary furniture is arranged in imaginary rooms. An imaginary Christmas tree is decorated. Imaginary Summer parties are planned in the imaginary barn to amuse guests with imaginary barnyard animals. Then, tragedy.

The house tilted. Walls leaned. Water dripped from the ceiling. The kitchen had housed wild animals, at best guess. Awful. And the price? Astronomically impossible given the condition.

Forget about it. Try try try to forget about it.

No dice.

Two years later, foreclosure. Housing slump. Real estate Armageddon. Thank God.

What seemed insurmountable seemed insignificant. Leaning walls? So what? Dripping ceiling? Who cares? Did you see the fireplaces? The pasture? The imaginary imaginings? It's perfect.

We'll take it.