Time for more literature via the ongoing Digital Potlatch, so here’s Chapter Four from BUFFALO LIGHTS, this one about selling our home in Maryland. It’s entitled “Real Estate for Dummies,” and nostalgia falls by the wayside as the narrative begins to shift. To access preceding chapters and the introduction, just visit the Buffalo Lights category page. You can read the full synopsis here.
Part I: Maryland My Maryland
Chapter 4: Real Estate for Dummies
Saturday was supposed to be a big day for showing the house, and it was truly bloody hot.
I walked to the back door and put my nose to the screen, peering out at the white sky and greenish-brown grass. Twenty-two straight days of 90 degrees or more on top of a 20-inch rainfall deficit for the past 12 months had worked their evil magic on what had once been a perfect Maryland backyard. Instead of a cool, spongy, dark green carpet of grass, there was a stubbly, prickly scattering of semi-green stems and dried-up leaves. The ground itself was hard and cracked, and the two English walnut trees had been completely taken over by drought-crazed squirrels!
I figured they had come up from the woods to drink from the birdbaths and chow down on green walnuts. They’d already decimated this year’s crop, at any rate, judging from the ugly sharp bits and chunks of walnut shells that rained down constantly from the almost-leafless trees. Walking barefoot was out of the question, and the moist pieces of husk could stain your clothes. If any buyers showed up to look at the house, odds were that walnuts would be the last thing on their minds, but I didn’t like the omens.
The word was that out-of-town buyers would be arriving at the agent’s office around 10:00 a.m. and that there was at least a chance they’d come look at our property. Fair enough. Friday evening I stripped and waxed the kitchen floor, hid the dirty laundry, cleaned the toilets, shoved piles of things where I’d never find them, and went to bed feeling smug. The next morning I did the vanilla-extract trick, turned on the bathroom fluorescents that take 20 minutes to light, ran the vacuum cleaner over the carpets, emptied the wastebaskets, threw the dirty dishes and the compost bucket under the kitchen sink, and waited for the call. When I got the call from our agent, I’d run some errands I’d saved up just to have reason to be out of the house.
[NOTE: not part of the book, but for real estate junkies, we bought the property above w/ 2.57 acres for $99K in 1989. It sold in early 2000 for $110K. Roughly one percent appreciation per year, folks, which used to be the way things were in real estate before the (temporary) boom...]
What happened, of course, was that I got sweaty, irritated, and confused. Had I misunderstood? The house sat with lamps lit and ceiling fans running for the next few hours until I heard from my agent that the buyers had just seen a seven-bedroom Victorian and proclaimed it “too small.” Our house was out of the question then, but at least it was clean! I hadn’t even turned everything off when I got a second call from the realtor: some buyers had “just walked into the office,” and could they bring them out in 45 minutes or so? It would be another agent. I was supposed to be out of sight but on the premises, to answer questions if necessary (“just go from room to room”). Pretty damn insulting, I thought, but hell, OK. Sure. I exchanged my wrinkled tank top for nice clean T-shirt and did the vanilla extract trick all over again. Jesus, I said to myself, we’d done it all! We burned sage. We buried St. Joseph upside-down in the garden. Our hearts were pure. We just needed a buyer…
Right on cue, a high-zoot S.U.V. and a big silver Mercedes sedan with a combined value exceeding the price of the house rumbled into the driveway. Before I knew it, the three buyers had passed through the downstairs from front to back with no detours and were heading for the Benz. For all I knew they’d left the motor running. The agent came upstairs to tell me “it’s not anything like what they’re looking for!” and the convoy roared off in search of better prey. The whole thing couldn’t have taken more than 90 seconds — so much for Saturday. I would have gotten mad but it was much too hot, and something else was nagging at my brain.
I turned off all the ceiling fans and poured myself a tall, cold glass of lemonade. This was just an interval, I realized, and one I might later come to miss. Sooner or later God and our agent would sell the poor old house, and then the real adventure would begin.
Related posts:
- BUFFALO LIGHTS: Maryland to New Mexico – Part I, Chapter 1, “Imprinting”
- BUFFALO LIGHTS: Maryland to New Mexico – Part I, Chapter 2, “Blood Rites”
- BUFFALO LIGHTS: Maryland to New Mexico – Part I, Chapter 3, “Missing Links”
- BUFFALO LIGHTS: Maryland to New Mexico – Prologue & Introduction
- San Diego Real Estate Meltdown & St. Francis, KS
