It's good to be home again, although we have hardly been roughing it. Mrs. Paco and I went to stay at the house my brother and I inherited from Old Paco. The place is a little run down, but very livable, and the locale offers the kind of bucolic charm that takes the edge off of one's worries.
Here's a view of the house from the other side of the fence dividing the yard from the pasture.
And here's a view from the front porch.
My brother's been in touch with a realtor who has some notion of marketing the place up nawth as a horse property, trying to appeal to would-be gentlemen ranchers in places like New Jersey, I imagine. I dunno. My father did run some cattle and a few horses there, but it was a lot of work. It's a lovely site, I have to admit. I believe I probably mentioned before that the Paco clan used to raise cotton in those fields during the Great Depression, and up into the WWII years.
There's a pretty little pond on the property, and I walked down to it yesterday to check it out. As I got close, I accidentally flushed a mother deer and two of her young from the trees, and they went bounding across the pasture to parts unknown. They were far too fast for me to get on film, but here's a photo of the pond.
My brother is working with a lady who specializes in estate sales to do a tag sale sometime around the middle of October. We hope to be able to liquidate the
1. A lead musket paperweight
2. A couple of pocket knives
3. Two vintage Cutter snake-bite kits from the late 1950s (unused)
4. A leather-bound cosh (interestingly, the business end has a certain amount of wear on it)
The snake-bite kits particularly appealed to me, because they bring vividly to mind my father's days as a revenooer. He always carried a snake-bite kit because of all the time he and the other agents spent prowling about in the woods looking for illegal stills, and I remember him showing me how the thing was supposed to work when I was about six years old. These days, that particular method of treating snake bites is considered archaic, but the kits were strangely fascinating to me. I opened one and there it all was: the tiny razor with a tiny handle for making incisions around the wound, a little vial of antiseptic, and the rubber pieces that could be used to suck blood and (one hoped) venom from the wound. Amazing how such a simple little thing can trigger so many memories.
We returned yesterday to find the house in good shape, save for some minor water damage to the ceiling in the garage, and it seems that all of our neighbors were similarly fortunate, thanks be to God. Many in our part of the state were not so lucky, however, and we must do what we can to help them.
9 comments:
I'd imagine that was a relief, coming home to a house in one piece.
Yeah, your dad's old place looks pretty rough. Probably not worth a whole lot. Tell you what, tho, I'd give you $50k for the place, sight unseen. And, seeing as to how it was your families' place, I'd even grant you visitation rights if you get to feeling nostalgic. Just drop by anytime, and wander the grounds and scare the deer.
What town is that near? I may be in Raleigh again the 2nd week of October. If it's within range, and the timing is right, maybe I could swing by the sale and do a little bidding on the treasures to be had.
Glad things are all right.
Maybe eighteen years ago we had a ferocious windstorm up here. A friend who lived across the Sound had a weekend house near me so I went to check it out. Some trees had come down, there was a good sized part of one on the roof over the master bedroom but no major damage.
As I walked around the house I paused in front of the bedroom window, looking at a tree reflected in it. I turned around but couldn't figure out which tree is was reflect... shit. It was in the house on the other side of the window. The part of a tree I saw atop the roof had snapped off, spiked right down through the roof and the ceiling all the way to the floor, and then the rest snapped at the roof line and fell sideways. What I saw on the roof was just the half that was outside the house.
So mt father and I went in with a chainsaw and cut up the part inside, and hauled it out. By the way, if you do run a chainsaw in side your house, be prepared for the smoke detectors to go off. Then we climbed onto the roof, tossed off the piece up there, and tacked down a tarp over the hole until permanent repairs could be made.
I've been thinking of that story since you relocated away from the storm. It didn't seem apropos to bring it up until now.
Prodigious Areas of Condos & Offices, Enterprises.
The auction of all those "pickings" plus the venison should get things started.
Welcome back, Mr. Paco and family. Glad everything is okay. Lovely place, your old homestead, I wonder that you would sell it.
Turns out my grandson and his wife didn't have to evacuate after all, and came through the storm okay, although as I predicted, grandson did end up stacking sand bags.
Good to hear that they didn't have to evacuate. Stacking sandbags...ah, the life of a Marine. Bet the recruiter failed to mention it.
Welcome home! Thank God all is basically fine! At least the damage was in the garage and not in the library/study...or wherever the Lazy Boy is.
God bless all those affected by the storm.
The old homestead is a beautiful place. I, like Rebecca, am surprised that you and Bro Paco decided to sell it. I can imagine the history. If those walls could talk. As for the contents, there might be something that those pickers on television might want.
Was it more of a dustbowl in the 30s? Looks too wet for cotton but I'm no expert.
Worn cosh, haha, what stories it could tell of Irish brawling to be sure.
“The land is the only thing in the world worth working for, worth fighting for..."
Personally, I'd love to hang on to the property, and I even toyed with the idea of buying my brother out, but the place needs a lot of work and it's difficult to justify doing that from an economic perspective.
There's also a safe buried in a hole in the ground under a credenza. God knows what's in it; probably a bunch of IOU's issued by my constantly broke Uncle Jack.
Good to see you and the missus back home at Paco Command! ANd equally good that the damages were minor, indeed.
It's always sad to let go of land that has been in the family for more than a generation. Much happened there that is tied to blood.
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