Selling the "home" place...

Got word a couple of days ago that we finally have a buyer for Mom and Dad's place. It has been two years since Mom passed but I've been caretaker there since 2002. I've had access to it for hunting, shooting, and other things including family stuff since 1981. It is familiar and comfortable. It will soon be gone.

Before Mom passed we had already mostly cleared the house and auctioned off the contents. Sadly, Mom or her precious cats had damaged much of the furniture and with the economy taking a nose dive at the same time, we didn't see much in the way of money from it as we once thought we (i.e. the family) might realize from the sale of the things. Of that which was good, I gave my sister a shot at taking anything but she didn't take much. I did pass out to the interested daughters the spinning and weaving stuff. Oh well. So it goes. It was "just" stuff.

The house itself is no great shakes. I couldn't convince Nana to move out there and really, she's right. We'd have had to do a lot to the place to satisfy her as will the new owners.

The executrix has been really good in working with us. My parents were very smart to name the bank to administer the will (whomever went first) and it has saved me a lot of worry about whether or not my sister will be satisfied with how things are turning out. Above all, that is what I want.

Yesterday my wife and I went to get the sleeper sofa and chairs I was using when staying overnight (to maintain the insurance). Then, today, I went out there and collected almost all my tools and the last couple of pieces from inside the house and brought them home.

One of the things I brought back was a barometer that Mom had had as long as I can remember. Everywhere we lived, and we lived a lot of different places, that barometer was hung in a prominent place in the kitchen or dining room. I remember her tapping it to settle the needle and then turning the register needle to 'zero' the thing so that she could tell how much and how fast the atmospheric pressure was changing. Over the years she got pretty good and predicting weather by that and watching/listening to the weather 'experts'.

Bertha and Albert in the shop

I also brought home a plaster horse statuette. Back during the depression my great-grandfather, Albert Ellison Flint, ran a photo and gift shop in Braintree, Massachusetts. He and great-grandma Bertha bought it after he lost his job at Butler's department store in Boston. For his store, he'd bought three of these plaster horses to sell. One was smashed in transit. Over the winter he carefully glued it together (like a 3-D jigsaw puzzle) and it has been in our households ever since. The auction house thought it was nothing, and it is but for that story. He was about 67 when he did that and had to overcome the jumble of pieces, his eyesight and perhaps a bit of a shake and the adhesives of the time.  For these reasons the horse story was told as a tale of perseverance and 'pluck' in the face of adversity.

I still have a lawn mower and weed eater to bring back.  I have to go through the house and clean for the new owners (it is a matter of courtesy).  I have to move our RV out of there and find a new parking place.  Then, it will be done.