Daily Archives: August 14, 2018
And One To Go . . .
Today was our penultimate visit to the house trying to wrap up clearing out the last of our stuff.
Actually though it was 3 separate visits today, with the first one to pick up a lot of left-over packing materials and a bunch of stuff for the Salvation Army.
We left the rig about 11 and after picking up the stuff at the house, dropped off the packing stuff at my clients since he ships so much stuff. Then after a delicious lunch at our favorite East Star Chinese Buffet, we dropped off the stuff for the Salvation Army.
Then it was back over to the house to get a load to take back down to the store room. And after that it was back up to the house for a load of things that we’re keeping at the rig until Brandi, Lowell,and Landon have moved into their new house. No use taking it up now so they just have to move it. So we finally got back to the rig about 4pm.
Then tomorrow I’ll go by the house one last time to load all of our normal stuff, air compressor, battery charger, antenna poles, spare parts, solar screen panels, etc., back into the truck. Then we should be done.
As far as we know we’re still closing on Thursday, but no time or place yet. And it turns out that Brandi’s closing has also been moved up a week, to Friday, August 24th. The sooner the better for all of us.
As we’ve been moving a lot of boxes of old family photos and letters, we keep coming across some interesting things, including this old photo of one of my parent’s beach houses at Orange Beach, AL near Gulf Shores.
In 1957 my parents bought 300 feet (six 50 foot lots) of beachfront land at Orange Beach. Then in the mid-60’s they traded 4 of the lots to a builder to build two houses, the Sea Fever and the Sandpiper, of my father’s design on the remaining lots. You can see the other one just to the left in the photo.
They rented them out over the next 30 years, and Jan and I stayed in one a number of times. Then in the mid-90’s, after my father died, my mother sold off one and then the other.
One of the buyers tore down the Sea Fever and built a nice three story brick house. The second buyer actually moved the Sandpiper to the other side of the street.
There were also nice brick homes built on the other four lots to the west. Then in 2004 came Hurricane Ivan.
Now my father had been building on the beach since the early 50’s, and he knew how to build things that would survive hurricanes. And that was the case with Ivan.
All the homes along the 300 feet just disappeared, with no trace left. And all the homes on either side of my parent’s remaining house also were gone. Only the Sandpiper survived. And it’s still there today.
And note that nothing has been built on the other lots in the last 14 years.
Thought for the Day:
The good news is that I’ve made it to my golden years. The bad news is that there ain’t no gold.
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