Magic Wands
The man I bought my shack from back in 1977 told me he’d read an article in Mother Earth News that said just drive around where you want to live, find some old run down homestead abandoned and overgrown, go to the County offices, find out who owns it, call em up and see if they want to sell it cheap. By god, that’s exactly what he did and luck of the draw, he got an alcoholic owner going bankrupt ready to sell to the lowest bidder. Fairy tales, Virginia, occasionally do come true. But mostly, they don’t ….
My guy pulled the blackberries off the roof, tore the rotten walls off, rewired the electrical, ran a hose for water from the neighbor’s house, then ran out of money. He must’ve read a subsequent article about Raising Dogs for Fun and Profit, because he bought two pedigree mastiffs, one male and one female, built a plywood Gitmo and fenced them in. He planned to breed them, sell the puppies for a small fortune and make enough to finish the shack to semi-habitable condition for his suffering wife and kids.
Course, as always happens when reality collides with dreams, the dogs, big aggressive beasts, tore into each other, scarring their mates and ruining any chance for ribbon-winning at future dog shows. I guess my boy didn’t consider dogfighting as an avenue to success, so he tried mail-order sales awhile and finally, like himself, ran into someone chasing a similar fairy tale. Me. He doubled what he’d paid and packed up the nuclear family sans dogs and headed his big trailer to Maine, lock stock and barrel. In the winter. To build, he said, a cabin and start anew.
I happen to be from Maine. I told him you aren’t going to build anything but igloos in the winter, man. He said we’ll see, just send those $225 payments to Maine. A month later I got a letter instructing me to send payments to Florida. And please, don’t give anyone my address.
I googled him up the other day out of idle curiosity. A site had him listed as some kind of snake oil salesman with unhappy customers going online to say DON’T BUY ANYTHING FROM THIS CROOK!!! It’s 36 years too late for me. Like I said, sometimes fairy tales come true. But usually you have to work very very hard. And most folks, well, they just want the Magic Wand.
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