The Suarez family, friends of my brother Arlan, were planning to redo their kitchen, and so offered the old cabinetry to our family. Since the cabinets in at Mom and Dad’s are ancient steel monstrosities that are probably at least thirty, if not fifty, years older this was an opportunity for frugal upgrading. The cost was simply the time and effort required to remove the cabinets. This became Saturday’s adventure.
I suppose, strictly speaking, it wasn’t an adventure. We didn’t get lost, imperil our lives and health, or otherwise get tangled up in excitement. But hitching up the trailer to the truck and heading off into dirt-road country in Pennsylvania feels a bit like an adventure. It certainly was a perfect day for an adventure. The autumn colors were near their height, and in spite of the previous day’s rain Saturday’s weather had turned mild and sunny. The trip out was a journey across the rolling back hills and narrow dirt roads with little to show for the passage of the last twenty to forty years. Technology, and people, lose much of their oppressive nearness when you get out into country where you can look from horizon to horizon and see nary another habitation.
We had a bit of a problem reaching the Suarez house because a number of dirt roads were closed. We ended up being directed by bright orange signs in a large circular route which brought us to the house from nearly the opposite direction of our initial approach. Our best guess was that roadways had been washed out by the torrential rain from the previous day. When we arrived we found ourselves at an old farmhouse situated at the corner of a one lane dirt road. The road had been completely unmarked, and we would have taken somebody’s long driveway instead of the road except the owner of said driveway stopped on their way out to point us toward the narrow rutted path that looked like a driveway, and told us that was the road we wanted to take.
The house had a great view of the distant hills, and reminded me much of Mom and Dad’s place as far as being an old farmhouse, though it was much, much further along in the processes of being fixed up. Which chickens out scratching in the dirt road and the occasional pickup truck rattling by, the place had an idyllic atmosphere. The house wasn’t some glorious beauty, but if someone asked me where I would want to live I would tell you that is the sort of place I would want to live.
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