Celia Hayes – The Accidental Texan

The crib was quite a nice one – mostly wood and a classic design, painted light green. Neutral if one is not decorating aggressively in pink or blue, in expectation of a boy or girl. I went for cheery yellow in baby nursery décor and linens, in 1979 when I was expecting my daughter, when expectant parents generally had no notion at all until the moment of delivery. I was a very junior enlisted troop at that time, living in the barracks thousands of miles from family with no expectation of any support, emotional or otherwise from the man who I sadly had to consider an ex-whatever.

Anyway, the crib that I sold last week was surplus to needs, even though it was one of those ones which could be – with the purchase of additional bits and bobs available on Amazon – transformed into a youth bed, a small nursery love seat, or the headboard to a full-sized twin bed. Wee Jamie, the Wonder Grandson had long since outgrown it as a crib and my daughter had no need of it in her house in any of those permutations … so early in May I put it on Next Door, for sale at $50;  I hoped to get something back that I could spend on plants for the garden, as well as clear out more space in the house and latterly, the garage.

But it didn’t sell at that price point although there were two inquiries from parties I suspect were scammers – assumptions based on the wildly out-of-local area codes on their given phone numbers and then a song-and-a-dance over a proposed Zelle payment … I mean, really – you need to send me $500 because paying from a business account, according to a suspect email message supposedly from Zelle demanding a follow up on this urgent matter? An email with a non-functioning customer service number with an area code for Austin but a mailing address in Phoenix, Arizona? Look, Sunshine, I was born at night, but it wasn’t last night…

So, the crib didn’t sell and I acquiesced to marking it down to $30 and basically forgot about it until a query from a third party. Was it still available, and would I take $20? Yeah, but split the difference at $25. Reply from the prospective buyer: Sure. Running errands in the neighborhood Friday afternoon – would that time be OK for pickup?

Me (inclined by then to just take the thing to Goodwill but for the trouble of getting it there): Show up with money, this is the address, and the doorbell on the gate is shaped like an owl. I’d be home all afternoon. The item is in parts in my garage, so ready to go.

About all the effort I made for this was to be home Friday afternoon.  I was genuinely surprised when the gate doorbell rang inside the house shortly after noon, which sent the dog into spasms of barking – which I could hear from where I was renewing the paint on the back porch. Ah, the buyer for the crib. I was mildly surprised to have one actually appear. From the nym on Next Door I had kind of expected a male – but this was a very thin, very young woman in jeans and a polo shirt with the emblem of a local animal rescue organization on it.  She had a large dog in the back seat of her car; a small sedan approximately the size of my own. There was one of those dog-proof seat covers on the back seat; obviously her dog rode there often.

I opened the garage door, she opened up the trunk of her car, and we began playing automobile Tetris, loading in pieces of the crib. She asked me if I had change for a twenty, which I didn’t – but I did have Zelle, so that’s how payment went. The headboard was too large for the trunk, so she moved the dog to the front seat, and we slid the headboard into the space just behind the front seats. I had taken care to zip-tie a baggie with the various metal fasteners which hold the crib parts together to one of the side elements: I explained which machine bolts and nuts held the assembled crib together, and which were for fastening the mattress support. The buyer nodded and assured me that she would be sure to tell her friend who would be getting the crib as a present at her baby shower in a day or so – which fasteners went were.

That was the last piece of the crib. She sent me the $25 asked for it; done and dusted. She closed up her car, reassured the dog and drove away, leaving me to remember.

A present of a second-hand crib at a baby shower.

Been there, been the recipient of that sort of gift and darned welcome it was too back then. My best friend in the barracks in Japan, 1979 who organized a baby shower for me also bought a second-hand crib for the baby daughter who would eventually sleep in it. A highchair, too – as well as serving as coach for Lamaze classes and going into labor and delivery with me when the time came.

The thing that I was reminded about again, when I sold the crib – is that for a baby, second-hand doesn’t matter. A secure, safe place to sleep matters. Friendship and care matters from a friend to new parents. Love matters. Babies matter over all – and love, security and shelter are more important to them than practically any materiel second-hand and well-used bit of nursery furniture, cuddly soft blankets or cute onsies. That such things are supplied used and at second-hand … doesn’t matter at all.

It’s been a bit of a fraught week, what with the water leak in the main between the meter and my house – which meant that it would fall on me to have the main repaired or replaced, if repair was not possible. Which is what it turned out to be. Well, my house was built in the mid-1980s, by a reputable builder who poured a substantial cement foundation slab on a relatively stable part of the development and refrained from adorning my place with more than a minimum of brick facing on the front. In that respect I have gotten off lucky, in comparison to some of the neighbors with larger houses, farther up the hill. Many of those houses were built on thinner slabs on fill, or part-fill, and have heavy brick facing on at least three sides. So only having a plumbing issue after 30 years of ownership, instead of constant and expensive foundation issues …  piece of cake, in comparison.

I’ve also been fortunate in replacing siding, windows, HVAC, and water heater in the last couple of years, although I am still paying on those projects. About the only really big renovation remaining to do is to put down luxury vinyl flooring and have the kitchen cabinetry upgraded. Still – I’m currently in a more comfortable housing situation than those home renovators which are my favorite YouTube watch … even if my own little patch of paradise is not in a particularly scenic location or has any interesting architectural or historic merit. I’ll count the blessings that are mine!

One man in Portugal is rebuilding his grandparent’s fondly-recalled stone house in the village where he grew up. He is also reclaiming the truck garden and corn field; the view down the valley from his place, towards a range of hills on the eastern horizon is particularly lovely. I don’t care much for the look of his house – just a couple of plain stone-build blocks with a new tile roof – but the location is marvelous. Sometimes, he takes the camera on a jaunt through the narrow stone-walled lanes of the local village, past pergolas swagged with grape vines, ancient stone houses and little gardens which reminds me of some of the little towns we visited in Spain. He goes for the natural sounds in the audio:  of birds, the chimes of the local church sounding the hours, and the distant sound of a tractor turning over furrows in the next field over.

A young English/Venezuelan couple is also renovating an extremely decrepit Portuguese farm; they are much farther along in their project. They installed a shipping container as a tiny residence, while they worked on the much-decayed farm outbuildings. They’re saving the crumbling main house for the last. They’ve just about finished the two ranges of farm outbuildings; most of one and all of the other were in such appalling condition that they knocked one down entirely and rebuilt in concrete block sheathed in reclaimed stone. The other range was partially rebuilt within the shell – the rest serves as a workshop, while they hope that the roof doesn’t fall in entirely. Their brother-in-law is a skilled stonemason, who has done just about all the work in stone, while the husband has taught himself an acceptable level of fine carpentry.

Then there is another young couple – English and Slovenian rebuilding an ancient and scenic stone and wood three story cabin on a sloping hillside in a little village in Slovenia. (I had to look up where Slovenia is; I thought somewhere in Central Europe? Ah; part of what used to be Yugoslavia. The mountainous part, near to the border with Northen Italy, once part of the Austro-Hungarian empire and the Isonzo Front in the First World War.)

That little cabin was in truly parlous condition. After looking at the ‘before’ pictures, I believe that if the second story of wooden logs notched together at the corners hadn’t been of such sturdy timbers the whole thing would have collapsed and slid down the hillside entirely. The bottom level, set into the hillside itself was of limestone slabs mortared together. The mortar in some sections of those walls was so decayed that videos showed them being demolished with bare hands. They ran jacks underneath to support the timber upper walls and completely rebuilt each stone wall in four or five-foot sections – and installed French drains in a gravel bed all along the base of those walls below ground level. Now they are at a point of working on replacing the decayed wood sections and fitting out the interior. Also running in necessary electricity and plumbing – this in a structure for which both were a minor afterthought at least a hundred years or more after original construction. It’s a lovely little building, though. I reckon that it will be at least one more year before it’s structurally sound enough to actually move in and set up housekeeping.

The last cottage under renovation on YouTube is likewise in a scenic location, just as old and only marginally less decayed; an originally thatched Cotswold cottage (with a newer garage/apartment adjoining). This real estate heap is being worked on by a young English couple. They fell in love with the cottage, and bought it, thinking they would live in the apartment over the garage, while they renovated the cottage … except that the picturesque thatched roof was decayed to the point that there were mushrooms growing inside the place, essential beams were rotting away, and the garage annex was not all that much better condition. After much toil by friends and family, they managed to remove all the thatch, replace the roof with stone tiles and build in French drains around the walls to reduce the soggy condition of the place whenever it rains – which it does frequently as this is England. Alas, in the latest installment, while digging in the old building to install a new water main, the husband managed to break a hole in one sewer outfall serving both buildings. It’s a large ceramic pipe; and every attempt to cut it and install a connector and a new stretch of pipe just shattered even more of it. Now he and his very pregnant wife and their crazy spaniel dog have had to move out until it can be repaired …

Yes – looking at all of that – I am counting my housing blessing. All I have from this week is a front garden which looks like a WWI battlefield in miniature, what with all the trenches running through it.

It was still dark when I let the dog out this morning for a quick piddle. Yes, I may not have to be up before the crack of dawn these days – but Prince Fluff the Magnificent demands his chicken slurry lickable treat most mornings at about 6 AM and will loudly meow, paw the bedroom door and if in the bedroom – stomp heavily over the pillow until I get up and give it to him. Pulling the covers over my head does not work – he will only paw at the sheet and blankets and meow even louder. So – roll out, start the water for tea, measure out a scoop of Wagh Bakri International blend, open the lickable and squirt it out into Prince’s dish – and usually Benjamin the dog begins fussing at the door to be let out, by this time.

But this morning, when I opened the front door – which actually opens onto the narrow side yard of my house – I spotted something small, pale-furred and somewhat rodent-like scurrying briskly away. Benjamin paid only brief attention and didn’t chase after it – he really had to pee, I presume. The rodent-like thing moved off in the direction of the back yard and the empty field beyond. Not a field rat, or a skunk – both of which I have seen in my yard – but a juvenile opossum, about the size of a half-grown cat. And I have seen opossums in and around my yard; they move in a very distinct manner.

I am thinking that the opossum must have come to feast on the nectarines; they are ripe now and falling off the tree that I bought at Costco and planted by the front gate some years ago. This will be the second year that I have gotten a good showing of fruit from it, but alas, most of them are nibbled at by squirrels or knocked down by the wind before I can get much from them. Anyway, something has been eating the ripe and fallen fruit – so the only thing that really surprised me was that Benjamin didn’t have any interest in chasing it.

Then again – opossums do have teeth. Lots of them, and all very sharp. The cats who used to hang out in my back garden wisely didn’t have any problem with the large specimen whom I nicknamed Wellington (for the nose) who used to visit and nosh from the dish of dry kibble that I put out for them.

And then there were the four opossum kits who lived in the wisteria vine which had grown up over my back porch some years ago. One day when I was lying on the porch swing, reading a book, the kits climbed purposefully down the vine and one of them clambered up onto the end of the porch swing. I held very still, mostly because I wanted to see what it was going to do. What it wanted to do, apparently, was to hop up onto my lap and tentatively gum at a fold of my blouse, the edge of the book that I was reading, and at my fingers; not very hard, just sort of sampling for a taste, which apparently was not rewarded. Discovering that none of the above were in the least edible, the opossum kit climbed down again and vanished into the garden with the others. There may have been a double-dog-dare challenge invoked by one of the other kits. Anyway, when I related this encounter to my next-door neighbor, a retired civil servant some ten or fifteen years older than me, she confessed that if a ratty little creature with a bald tail and sharp little teeth had climbed up into her own lap, she would have been screaming still.

Anyway – they also eat garden slugs as well as fruit, so I’m actually rather glad to see them again.

This may be one of the kits, later – and all grown up