The Limo at the Little House

When we moved out here to our place in the country years ago it was quite primitive.  Our own version of  “Little House on the Prairie”…sort of…actually we could’ve been eligible for a comedy adaptation of “Extreme Home Makeover”… had it been in existence at the time.  We definitely qualified for “You must be a Red-neck if…”!

It had all started as my idea…of which I am constantly reminded of… on a regular basis to this day.  We kinda…sorta…had to…move. 

Life was challenging.  Many…many circumstances were occurring in my life at that time…some of which I had no control…some that were within my control…if I’d only had the sense God gave a goose.  

But…I’m just one of those people that stuff happens to…and it’s not always good!  The Law of Attraction works in a different way for me.  At that time I had many life lessons to learn.

The kids thought I had lost my mind…JR just didn’t know any better at the time.  Now I had warned him…but he didn’t listen…I told him up front that my life was complicated…cursed…he told me that was stupid.  Well let me tell you what…he rues that day!

We didn’t have anywhere to go…so I got this bright idea!  I couldn’t wait until he came home on the weekend so I could share it with him.  He had a travel trailer that was parked beside my house.  I took him out there so we could talk and not be overheard by my kids.  I decided to just bluntly tell him what I was thinking…I wasn’t going to mince any words…I thought I would need every breath to convince and negotiate my idea.

“What would you think about trying to find some land to buy?  We could move the travel trailer out there and live in it for awhile and maybe build a house a little later.”

He looked at me a little funny and asked, “What would we do with all our stuff?”

I had all the answers… I explained that we could rent a storage room and just move all the furniture and appliances in there along with all the rest of our things.  He agreed and we started looking for a place to buy.  It didn’t take long before we found a place with several acres.

He’d never lived in the country.  I grew up on a ranch in Central Texas.  He had never done without common comforts of life in the city…I had experienced water well troubles…problems with the septic tank…one old house on the ranch had an outhouse!  I could do this! 

We started coming out on the weekends…cutting out brush and pulling out huge vines of poison ivy from the trees.  Just cleaning things up…it was raw land.  A pasture…trees…a prairie.  No water…no sewer…no electricity.

We put our things in storage…we had to rent the largest storage room available…not much fits in an 8’ X 30” travel trailer.  We got electric service to a pole and we moved. 

The kids have now decided I’m insane.

We hauled water…our friends hated to see us coming…they knew what we wanted.  

I could just hear them…”Oh no…here comes that white trailer trash… begging again for water!”

We bought 10 ten gallon containers and filled them up every day.  It took 100 gallons a day.  We made such a nuisance of ourselves we took to going up to the local service station in the dark of night and used their water hose around at the back.  We hauled water for a year.

Sewer…well we won’t go into that…but I will tell you that was the number one priority…the next thing we did after the electricity.  But for awhile…we hauled that too.  Have you ever seen Christmas Vacation?  Let me just say…I can relate to that!  Don’t worry we didn’t contaminate anything…but it wasn’t pleasant. 

The kids thought I should be committed…so did JR.  I kept telling them we would laugh about it someday.

Things weren’t so bad for JR.  He worked in Ft. Lauderdale.  He lived in a very nice comfortable suite at a new hotel on the beach.  The square footage of his suite was about four times the size of our trailer.  He flew home on Sunday and flew back on Monday.  It was kind of like camping out… for him.

Meanwhile…back here…things were bad.  Real bad! 

Not only were we hauling water and sewer…our hot water heater was a 6 gallon tank.  It was a propane heater…so we had to take the tanks off the trailer and haul them to be filled.  It’s bad enough for four people trying to take baths with a 6 gallon hot water heater in a bathroom that was eight by four feet…but we had to space out the baths so the hot water could heat between each one.  Not to mention the hot water pilot light would blow out with a butterfly kiss…which wasn’t a problem so much in any time of year with the exception of winter.  There’s just nothing like being out in the dead of winter with a Texas norther blowing in at about 50 miles an hour while you’re trying to light the pilot of a cantankerous hot water heater.

We had other problems…

JR had a Chevy Blazer that was in the shop more than we drove it and I had a Ford Thunderbird with 300,000 miles on it.  Between both of those vehicles being in the shop every month I felt lucky when one of them was running.

During the years that he traveled being a neurotic and obsessive-complusive personality he called me at least 30 times a day!  I knew when he got up, when he went to bed, what he ate for dinner, etc. …much more than I wanted to know about his life of luxury on the beach! 

My gosh…I had my own problems.  I didn’t care what he was doing in Ft. Lauderdale…I just couldn’t sympathize with him for the “sacrifices he was making for us”.  Yeah right!

I was busy out here…if I wasn’t hauling kids I was hauling water, trash…yeah we had to haul our trash at that time…there was no trash service, sewer, or propane bottles.   I had cars in the shop…kids that were in sports and all kinds of school activities…and all our stuff was in storage 25 miles from home.  It was inevitable that we had to run to town to the storage facility for something we just couldn’t live without! 

One day my Thunderbird was in the shop and I had gone to a track meet in a neighboring town to see my girls run.  Wouldn’t you know…I was driving that danged Blazer and I barely made it to the football field parking lot.  I called a tow truck to come pick it up and just told them I would leave the keys inside and they could come get it and take it to the garage. 

My friend that was sitting beside me in the bleachers got a little hysterical when she saw the Blazer on the back of the tow truck driving by on the street.

She grabbed my arm, saying” Leah, is that your truck?” 

I had really forgotten about it…I was much more interested in the track meet…but I told her yes it was and I might need a ride home.

At the time it didn’t cross my mind that I had to pick up JR at the airport the next morning.  Every week I took JR to the airport and went to pick him up when he flew home from Florida.  I was on the road frequently between here and DFW.

Of course, he called me late that afternoon reminding me to be on time to pick him up the next morning.  He was more than a little perturbed with news that I didn’t have a vehicle.  You would have thought that I planned it that way!  He ranted and raved on the phone so much that I finally got mad and told him he would just have to figure it out.   

Actually….I was thinking…why can’t he just stay in Florida?  I could have gone two weeks without seeing him.  At that moment I can be pretty sure that I really didn’t care if I saw him at all…ever.

Who did he think I was…his Fairy Godmother?  What did he expect me to do?  Wave my magic wand and produce a  pumpkin coach pulled by mice? 

I called a neighbor that was a good friend and asked her if she would take me to get him the next morning.  I knew that I would hear from him again before his flight left Ft. Lauderdale.

It was the middle of the night and I was just starting to finally fall asleep from the stressful day when the dogs started howling.  Looking out the window of the trailer I could see by the glow of our security light a large vehicle bumping over the prairie coming towards our house.  As I gathered my wits and tried to think how to protect my kids from obvious danger a huge limo pulled right up to the front door.

The driver hopped out to open the back door and you can just guess who popped out!  There he was…the neurotic…”Mr.OCD”.  You would have thought it was someone of significance.

And the driver…well he looked a little more than concerned.  I’m sure he was thinking it was his last moment on earth.  He’s forty miles from DFW…out in only God knows where…in front of a ratty travel trailer in the middle of nowhere…with a crazy man.  Dogs are barking…JR’s yelling at them to shut up…the kids are awake…and I was wondering what is going on!  He explained that he just booked the next flight out and came home a little early.

He does everything in a big way…it’s just his nature…he can’t help it…and the scary thing is…as the years have gone by…I expect it and I’m never too surprised!

JR pays the driver and sends him on his way.  It’s understandable that he is glad to go…the limo is flys across our land with the tires screeching as he turns out on the road.

My only question was….”Why didn’t you just take a taxi?”

We lived an interesting life at the Little House on the Prairie!

Leah