I had no idea that my random thoughts were going to turn into a mini-autobiography. If that’s not your thing, or not why you are here, feel free to pass over this one. Unfortunately, I need a bunch of background to support the thing that I have been thinking about.
History time
My parents split up when I was 11. Not too long after George (from a previous post) passed away, but that’s probably not why. (kidding!). I realized as I was writing that first sentence that I have been telling people for years that I was 12. I think that their divorce might have become final when I was 12, but they probably started drifting apart when I was 8 or 9. That’s not the thing that you tend to notice at that age, and to all outward appearances the split was amicable. So it wasn’t a big deal in my life.
I realize now that it hit my mom harder than I realized at the time. I think she was of a generation where divorce was still considered a failure. It’s strange to think that my mom did a great job of holding the house together when my dad was away for months at a time during his military assignments, but it seemed to be too much when there was no longer a chance that he was coming home. Things got a lot more stressful for a while.
She dated a little bit, mostly just guys that the family knew through my dad’s work. After a year or so, she met a guy who was different from my dad in nearly every way. He was a little bit country, a *lot* outdoorsy, and super patient with me. I came to adore and idolize that man.
Early teen years
Glenn came into my life when I was 12 or so. He took me under his wing and taught me a lot about being a person. He taught me how to shoot a handgun, a rifle, even a slingshot. We went hunting and fishing and camping. He taught me to drive a car, a bulldozer, and how to run a chainsaw. He would drive the 150 miles from his house to ours, just to pick me up to spend the weekend with me.
For nearly 4 years, I finally had the father figure that I had dreamed about.
My mom had a friend from work who had horses,. She had a foal that she wanted to sell. Mom thought it would be fun to have a horse, so she and Glenn bought it and moved it to another friend’s pasture.
At the time I had only a barely passing interest in horses, and I didn’t understand the logic of paying a couple hundred bucks to buy a horse and then move it from one pasture to another. At some point, the friend needed their pasture back, so we moved the horse to a rented pasture outside of Clatskanie.
Changes are coming
I didn’t know at the time, but mom and Glenn were in the process of ending their relationship. He was 5 years younger than her and had a daughter from a previous marriage, and wanted more kids. Mom was a little older, divorced, had two teenage kids, and just wasn’t starting over fresh.
So we had to figure out what to do with the horse. She wasn’t three years old yet, and she was *small*. We didn’t know at the time, but her growth had been stunted by spending her first year in a stall. At this point we were still hoping that she would grown into a normal sized horse that my mom could ride.
We found a boarding stable on the other side of our town that wasn’t prohibitively expensive. We were also kind of poor at the time so we had to be frugal. Glenn helped us move her from the pasture to a stall at the stable. I didn’t know at that time that the day that Glenn dropped her off for us would be the last time I would see him.
Mid-Teens
The boarding stable belonged to a guy named Jack. He was (to my mind) an old guy. he lived in a small travel trailer in the covered arena because he had recently divorced his wife of 30 years. I liked him (at first). He forced me to understand very quickly that owning a horse takes work. Constant work. Day in, day out, no days off, work. But I was basically a city kid, so with surprising patience – he taught me.
Jack taught me how to be gentle and calm around the animals. When and how much to feed. He taught me how to teach the horse to walk on a lead, how to tolerate handling, to wear a headstall and a saddle. He taught me to ride, and the horse and I learned together.
I don’t know when or how it happened, but that barn became my life outside of school. I went every morning to feed and water, and every evening to feed and water and clean stalls,
If the weather was nice, groups would get together and trail ride. When it wasn’t we would ride around the arena. There were other kids around my age and we would make up games, sometimes chasing each other around the arena and practicing roping each other. During the summer Jack would build a campfire up by the pond and we would cook burgers and hot dogs and s’mores. He would bring his guitar so that he could play and sing.
Didn’t see *that* coming
Somehow, during this time, Jack and my mom fell in love. Completely blindsided me. Surprised me in the way that only the truly self-absorbed can be. And it made me mad. I don’t even know why anymore. Part of it was that Jack was about 15 years older than my mom, and that just struck me as insanely creepy. For the record, he was 5 years younger than I am as I write this. So take it for what it’s worth.
They moved into a house together a few weeks before I graduated from high school. I was already planning to spend the summer after graduation with my father, so I was happy to get away. That summer turned into six years. Mom and Jack never married, but together they bought the land that he had been leasing for the barn. They put a house on the property and lived there with a view of the barn and the pond and the pasture. They sold the horse because she was still too small for anyone but a child to ride.
Life goes on
Clearly I was wrong about the viability of their relationship, they lived together for 29 more years. I eventually moved back to the area, made peace with Jack, married and had my own family. When Jack passed away, mom was adamant about wanting to stay in her home. Her health wasn’t great, but one of her grandkids was living with her and providing some assistance.
The property was something of a problem though. She didn’t have the ability to run the boarding stable business, or the means to take care of the constant maintenance that something like that requires. In the end, she sold the property, the barn, and the business to Jack’s oldest son. She sold it for under market price, but with the qualification that she wanted to keep her house. The final agreement was that she would accept a small down payment and 20 years of monthly payments, and would keep her house and the one acre it sat on until she died, and then the whole thing would revert to him with no balance owing. In a way, they set it up so that he was betting that she wouldn’t live out the term.
More changes
This worked for a few years – until she was unable to live on her own. She moved into my house, and over time we emptied out her house. Jack’s son took out a loan and used it to pay off the remaining balance so that he would own everything outright.
I was completely ok with this because it allowed my mother to realize the full value of what she had sold, and to have a little nest egg.
The funny thing is that through all of these changes, I never felt affected. Even when Jack’s son bulldozed the house in order to build a new one. It was never my house. I do wish that I had been more understanding of my mother’s feelings during that time, but there’s a lot that I wish I had done differently – and that’s a subject for a different story.
But that’s all just history
Jump forward to today
What has me thinking about this is a more recent development.
Jack’s son was married to his second wife. We didn’t have much contact with them once he bought out the property. I don’t know why.
I recently found out that Jack’s son caught Covid-19 while elk hunting with his friends. He wasn’t in excellent health to begin with, and he wasn’t strong enough to recover. He died from it.
And? Well that likely means that his wife will inherit the property and the business – and most likely, some pretty substantial debt. I know that he didn’t have life insurance, and that his first wife was getting half of his pension. I don’t know if the barn provides enough income to support itself. And I don’t know if she has the time or the ability to do what my mom knew that she herself couldn’t do 13 years ago. And if that means that she has to sell, then this place which was never my home but was nevertheless a significant part of my life, will no longer be part of my family.
End of an era
Why does this bother me??? I haven’t stepped foot on the land since the day we took the last of my mother’s belongings out of the house. I would never consider trying to buy it back – I don’t want to own it, I just want to know that I could go back there if I wanted to.
Maybe I’m just selfish? Just another old guy, longing for the way things were, and shouting at the clouds?
Probably, it doesn’t really matter.
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