How a City Girl Does Country All Wrong

dull red, moppy hair. He's between 35 and 50, it's nearly impossible to tell because his face is covered in stubble and he mainly just says “yep” “nope” and something I cannot decipher just yet. He works like a dog, though. Bill says Elliot will stay on and can do everything on the farm except pay bills and shop. For the last three months (Dad has been in and out of care that long, a fact that hit me fairly hard when Bill told me), a neighbor has been picking up the items at a local co-op about once every two or three weeks, and Bill has set up to have an invoice sent to him directly. She agreed to keep doing that for another month, but she is going to see her granddaughter in Tempe in March. If I am here, I will have to take it over and talk to Bill about accessing the savings Dad left for running the farm. If not, I’ll have to find someone to cover it. I think I can handle that much, but I might have the place sold by then.

I asked Elliot if he wanted to buy the place, just in case there was an easy button on this situation. Elliot took off his hat and scratched his head. He grinned nervously and said something I interpreted as follows: “Yep, sure, no, but I got the place down the road and gotta take care o’, uh, my mother. I told Danny, too. Wish I coulda hepped ya out but nope, gotta keep Momma there, until I can’t. Happy to keep workin’, though. Alright then.” I let that ricochet around a bit and finally took it to mean he would have liked to have the place, but he had to stay where he was, taking care of his mother. I guess maybe my dad offered it to him first. I didn’t want to push him, not knowing the particulars of why he couldn’t have made a place for her here or managed both properties. But at least he agreed to stay on as long as possible.

He lives about a mile away and walks over every morning. Maybe he has DUI’s or something?

We walked around the main areas of the place, and I met the dogs, chickens, and goats. The inside of the house was much cleaner than I expected it to be, but it needs a lot of repairs. I guess Dad spent all his energy on the animals and ran out of interest, time, or money when it came to the house. Bill says I would need to have a crew come in and work on it before I put it up for sale, but the main thing is to maintain the farm. He seemed to think a lot of the set up. Bill has a lot of respect for my Dad. They have been friends for a long time, since before I was born. He has been open and easy to talk to, but he did arch his eyebrow at one point and say, “It would be a crime to let this place run down. I know you and your dad weren’t always on good terms, but he loved this place, and besides, it’s worth more to you in good shape than in bad. Don’t worry about the small details.” And then he advised me to let Elliot teach me some things and then make my own judgment calls. “You let me know if you need anything. I mean, anything,” he said. He gave me his card and looked me straight in the eyes until I agreed. I thanked him for all his help.

After he left, I looked around the place and saw Elliot giving hay to the goats. It was getting windy and cold, and I didn’t have the energy to interact with him again, so I went back in the house. Not ready to get into my Dad’s personal items, I started straightening and cleaning the living room and kitchen area. I thought I would have some flashbacks to my childhood or something, but I didn’t. It might as well have been a stranger’s house, for all the emotional connection I had to it.

Dad didn't have many cleaning supplies, so I mixed a vinegar and water solution, a life hack I have used since college. Soon the whole house smelled like a jar of sauerkraut. I went to open a window to air the room out and had to pry it open with a butter knife. There was a nice accumulation of bugs in the track, and finding no vacuum cleaner, I wiped them into a towel, then wet another towel down with the vinegar solution to wipe out the stray bug parts. The window screen had a hole in it, so I grabbed some tape from Dad’s desk and covered the hole, and since the tape wasn’t sticking well, I tried to pull the screen out to tape the other side. It wouldn’t budge, so I went around behind the house, climbed over a stack of tires, and taped the back side of the hole. When I climbed back over the tires, one of the dogs finally noticed me and let out a monstrous growl, so I lost my balance and fell. It was not that big of a deal, but when I got up, I yelled at the dog to hush and decided to kick the offending tire, thereby finding out the tire was filled with concrete. CONCRETE! Who fills a tire with concrete? My turn to growl.

I hobbled my way back around the house and finished up the kitchen, at least the counters and floors.  I opened a cabinet door, fully expecting a possum to jump out. None did, but there were layers of dust and unidentifiable lumps there, so I decided deep cleaning could wait for another day and gingerly closed the