The country
Today I had to overcome shyness, not allow myself to be intimidated, and muster up the courage to hang out at a family gathering of strangers. Fortunately, the folks I met were warm and welcoming, and I quickly overcame my shyness.
Shortcake turns the big four-oh tomorrow. Today I met her and her husband, Dave Burgess, for the first time. Dave mops the floors and takes out the trash at Northwest Imports one morning each week, which is how Steve met Dave and his wife. She'd been planning this party for three months and invited Steve when she chanced to meet him one day at Whole Foods a little more than a month ago. Shortcake and Dave Burgess live on three acres off Nameless Road in Leander. There's a lot of really pretty property back there, but most of it is folks living in trailers or double-wides who keep things kinda messy. Neither Dave nor Shortcake have "real" jobs. Dave does pick up work, and Shortcake is a clown and does face and window painting. They live on next-to-nothing by keeping their costs down. Dave bought the property as a foreclosure for $3000 cash about ten years ago, so he only has to pay property taxes on it now. He does his own work on his truck and her minivan (which they also bought used and paid cash for), and they've built their own little shack on the property to replace an old trailer that came with the $3000 asking price. They have plans to build a real house one of these days, and in the meantime they've got a little slice of heaven arranged just the way they like it. Huge oak trees, a pretty little yard, peach trees, fig trees, chickens, a vegetable garden, and lots of flower gardens and rock walkways (formed out of rocks they dug up on the property) are all arranged purposefully enough to make you know that the people who live there care about keeping their space nice, even though they may live in a simple shack.
Not many of the people Shortcake invited to her party were able to make it. In fact, Steve, Isaac, and I arrived at the come-and-go all-day party around 4:30pm, stayed for three hours, and were the only guests the entire time. Apparently Dave's family showed up from noon to 4pm, so at least Shortcake had a steady stream of guests. Nevertheless, she felt like her party was a flop, and I could tell she appreciated having us there. We almost didn't make it. I was pretty tired and wanted to take an afternoon nap, and Steve wanted to do some work in the garage. But, since we'd been planning on going for more than a month, and since Steve wanted to keep up friendly relations with Dave, we chose to go.
Imagining how trashy the place probably was when they first bought it a decade ago (and seeing the ways they'd improved it over time) made me appreciate how difficult a task it is to buy cheap land and shape it to be what you want it to be. Once it's already fixed up with a house, driveway, gardens, and chicken coop, it's suddenly worth a lot more money and isn't the kind of place we could casually buy (at least not at Austin's real estate prices, which are the costliest in Texas). But more than that, I realized how much imagination it would take to walk onto a junky piece of land and see something as beautiful as what the Burgess's have managed to bring together. I've often dismissed the vacant lots we've looked at because they aren't cultivated at all, and I just don't have the imagination to see through all the brush and rock and junky trailers. But seeing how much the Burgess's have redeemed their little 3-acre homestead made me realize that just about any place can be redeemed, cultivated, and turned into the kind of place I'd like to call home.
Shortcake turns the big four-oh tomorrow. Today I met her and her husband, Dave Burgess, for the first time. Dave mops the floors and takes out the trash at Northwest Imports one morning each week, which is how Steve met Dave and his wife. She'd been planning this party for three months and invited Steve when she chanced to meet him one day at Whole Foods a little more than a month ago. Shortcake and Dave Burgess live on three acres off Nameless Road in Leander. There's a lot of really pretty property back there, but most of it is folks living in trailers or double-wides who keep things kinda messy. Neither Dave nor Shortcake have "real" jobs. Dave does pick up work, and Shortcake is a clown and does face and window painting. They live on next-to-nothing by keeping their costs down. Dave bought the property as a foreclosure for $3000 cash about ten years ago, so he only has to pay property taxes on it now. He does his own work on his truck and her minivan (which they also bought used and paid cash for), and they've built their own little shack on the property to replace an old trailer that came with the $3000 asking price. They have plans to build a real house one of these days, and in the meantime they've got a little slice of heaven arranged just the way they like it. Huge oak trees, a pretty little yard, peach trees, fig trees, chickens, a vegetable garden, and lots of flower gardens and rock walkways (formed out of rocks they dug up on the property) are all arranged purposefully enough to make you know that the people who live there care about keeping their space nice, even though they may live in a simple shack.
Not many of the people Shortcake invited to her party were able to make it. In fact, Steve, Isaac, and I arrived at the come-and-go all-day party around 4:30pm, stayed for three hours, and were the only guests the entire time. Apparently Dave's family showed up from noon to 4pm, so at least Shortcake had a steady stream of guests. Nevertheless, she felt like her party was a flop, and I could tell she appreciated having us there. We almost didn't make it. I was pretty tired and wanted to take an afternoon nap, and Steve wanted to do some work in the garage. But, since we'd been planning on going for more than a month, and since Steve wanted to keep up friendly relations with Dave, we chose to go.
Imagining how trashy the place probably was when they first bought it a decade ago (and seeing the ways they'd improved it over time) made me appreciate how difficult a task it is to buy cheap land and shape it to be what you want it to be. Once it's already fixed up with a house, driveway, gardens, and chicken coop, it's suddenly worth a lot more money and isn't the kind of place we could casually buy (at least not at Austin's real estate prices, which are the costliest in Texas). But more than that, I realized how much imagination it would take to walk onto a junky piece of land and see something as beautiful as what the Burgess's have managed to bring together. I've often dismissed the vacant lots we've looked at because they aren't cultivated at all, and I just don't have the imagination to see through all the brush and rock and junky trailers. But seeing how much the Burgess's have redeemed their little 3-acre homestead made me realize that just about any place can be redeemed, cultivated, and turned into the kind of place I'd like to call home.