Shortly after separating from my first wife and selling our home, I had to return to the house one day to pick up a package that had been sent there instead of to my groovy new bachelor’s pad. CDs, if you’re curious.
I know. I’m old.
The new owner, a kind Asian man, chatted with me for a bit and then asked if I’d like to step inside and take a look around. I hesitated for maybe half a second before accepting the offer. The rooms were exactly the same, and yet, everything was different: the awful green carpeting had been replaced with hardwood flooring and shiny stainless steel appliances filled the kitchen, which smelled like curry.
The whole experience felt surreal, and not just because the new owners had better decorating taste than I had (and were apparently bang-up cooks): crossing the threshold of a place that had been home, this time as a visitor, was downright bizarre.
And we’d only lived there for 10 years. I can only imagine what Dick was feeling as he pulled into the driveway of a home in which he’d resided for 45 years this afternoon. Actually, I don’t have to imagine.
“Wow, this feels strange,” he said, as he stepped out of his car.
The man is incredibly frail. He was basically tottering in place; I retrieved a folding walker with a seat and wheels from his backseat, helped him into it, and pushed him across the yard (down a slope, no less) to the first pond. And he apologized for his speech; after suffering a stroke, he is difficult to understand. I felt badly that he’d come all this way, but the guy was out running errands anyway, and his mind still appears sharp. The way his eyes lit up when gazing over his former yard made me feel better.
And, OMG, I learned so much from the man! It’s like I had my own personal Dicktionary. In addition to how to work the ponds–he even brought along two pumps for me to have!–he identified practically every tree and shrub in the yard. You’ve seen pics, so you can imagine how long that took. I learned we have a mock orange bush, trumpet vines, and Joe Pye weed; hemlock, river birch, buckeye, and Fat Albert spruce trees; and Concord grapes, among many others.
I also found out we have two very valuable peonies on our property. This one is worth $100:
As impressive as that is, he then pointed to a patch of ground and said, “This is the most expensive peony in North America.” I really had to squint, because there isn’t much left of it…
Apparently, it was accidentally cut down (not by us, I swear…there was never a plant in that spot since we bought the house). But there is one new shoot poking through the ground, and I hope like hell it grows, because if Dick is right–and he certainly seems to know his flora–then that would be a Lembrose peony, which is currently selling for $2,500!
Holy shit. Grow, baby, grow!!
The most interesting thing I learned, however, was the history of the property. You’ve seen the movie Poltergeist, where the little girl gets sucked through the TV and skeletons start swimming laps in the pool because the house was built on an old Indian burial ground?
Yeah, thankfully, nothing like that.
But the whole place was a cornfield once. We figured it had been something like that, because every fir tree in the forest that begins behind our property is growing in a perfectly straight line. There’s tons of underbrush and native vegetation, so it took me a long time to even notice that, but clearly all those trees had been intentionally planted. Nature ain’t that precise!
Here’s the really cool thing…
When he bought the lot, it was only half this size. Turns out there was a freakin’ road that ran north/south across the western edge of the property, where all our tall trees and ferns are now. A gravel road, I take it, and probably not very heavily trafficked given the ruralness of the area. But still! Dick went back to the cornfield owner and asked if he’d be willing to sell him the adjoining property where the road was. The guy agreed, and Dick had the road covered up. You can actually see this very clearly if you know what you’re looking at: the road (now asphalt) still exists, but it ends at our property.
I think that blew my mind more than anything else.
Dick and I ended up chatting for close to an hour. I think if he was 40 years younger we might actually be good friends, because at one point he told me how much he loved cutting the grass on his John Deere riding mower.
Kindred spirits, I tell ya.
I’m so glad I got the chance to visit with him, and told him I’d be in touch if I had any more questions. Pretty cool way to kill 60 minutes on a random Tuesday, huh?
Mark My Words 
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