Moving on Up

I think we've done pretty well in life as far as living conditions are concerned. Caleb and I upgraded from rough apartments in our college town to a broken-down doublewide trailer with the septic ripped out and the entry staircase torn away. This trailer was surrounded by drug addicts, a murderer, adulterers, a pedophile, and some sketchy people who operated a dog-fighting ring.

Despite all of that, we loved our little home. Caleb was able to purchase that trailer for us right before we got married. For our wedding present, we asked for donations to build a huge covered porch which spanned the entire length of the trailer. We did it, too. You had to be drunk to walk straight on it, but it was great sitting under its tin roof and listening to the rain. I think time spent on that porch talking was the main reason that Caleb and I made it through the first year of our marriage.

The next home we had was even better than the doublewide. That was in Elgin, Oklahoma. It had been built in 1932, so it was old, but it was move-in ready. We didn't have to clear the back acre by hand, like we had to do with our first property.

However, when we purchased that house, I must have had blinders on, because I did not notice the train track running through our back yard (I had also already been sleep deprived due to pregnancy). Nor did I notice we were located right next to some sort of gas pump—that could have been bad.

The first winter we lived there, a terrible blizzard came through and busted all of our pipes in 25 places. I felt like Laura Ingalls on that prarie. We had no water for ten days, and we had an infant. That, too, was rough. Luckily, someone who grew-up in cold places knew what to do when a blizzard was coming and told us to fill our bathtubs with water, so we could at least flush our toilets. Talk about small blessings, because this Louisiana woman did not know about freezing water.

Fast forward two more Army houses, which were both better than the previous homes where we lived, and we now reside in a perfectly-sized house where each of us can spread out. This current house was built in 1979 and it has a lot of quirks, but one of its eccentricities is that it seems to run on love, and that helps us keep moving on up in life, too.