House Hunting Season

By Chrissy Laws

Moose, bear, deer – northern Maine abounds with them. My husband and I were after a much bigger animal though, and it didn’t matter what time of year it was. Spring through winter, it’s open season. The tricky part is cornering the elusive beast.

Our journey began online where I found lots of inexpensive houses, but my large-print software can only do so much with those tiny house pictures. I e-mailed one to my father-in-law wondering why it was so cheap. He replied, “Do the words ‘not suitable for human habitation’ mean anything to you?” I must have missed something. But most of the time I had good reason to get excited.

“Jason, this is it! I’ve found our house!” My husband had heard that before, only to discover later that we’d need a snowmobile to access it or it was across the street from an asbestos mine. But this one seemed different. “Okay, I’ll be there in a minute,” he said. In a minute? I thought. How can he be so calm when I’ve found the perfect house?

We left our Massachusetts apartment hoping we’d love the little red cabin; we did. We couldn’t buy it, though, due to a misunderstanding – the owners didn’t understand that they were supposed to lower the price so we could afford it. So I found two more houses on the Internet and we drove those four hundred miles again.

The August sun blazed as we pulled into the driveway. Through my telescope, the house looked perfect – a little white ranch with blue shutters. We loved it... that is, until we went inside and met the renters.

“That washer and dryer don’t come with the house, and if the owner said they do, well, he’s a liar anyway – they’re mine!” spat the woman as we passed the appliances. She flicked on the gas stove as if to proclaim it could stay. I feared I’d be eligible for a Kojak lookalike contest if I remained in the kitchen with her menacing stove, so we moved on to the bedrooms.

“Can we come in?” our realtor hollered after banging on the teenager’s door a full minute. “Who is it?” he groaned. She explained through the closed door who we were and why we wanted to come in.

Unfortunately, he did open his door. Dressed in a black bathrobe to match his dyed hair, he pushed past us. His room reeked of something illegal and looked like it had been decorated by Stephen King. We fled the bedroom for cozier surroundings: the basement.

Towels sopped up water from leaking pipes and a bear-like dog growled at us – I wondered if he were fed on prospective buyers, but Jason assured me the beast was in a cage. We rejoiced to enter the sunlit world of the living through the storm doors. Nope, this wasn’t the house for us.

As we looked at the other place, Jason was so absorbed in inspecting things, that he forgot about me. I shuffled around the yard wondering when I’d fall into the bottomless pit that was waiting for me. You’d think I’d whip out a cane and fend for myself, but I didn’t. I waited till Jason returned to my side and then dug my sharp little nails into his hand. “Youch!” he wailed, as I sent an innocent smile in the realtor’s direction. Later, I explained that I had needed his help outside. He apologized, saying he hadn’t realized that, and that he sometimes forgets I have a vision disability at all. Neither house worked out, but those words made the trip worthwhile to me.

So, hand-in-hand, we drove those seven hours yet again to look at three more places. The first two weren’t right, but the third was – a small, rustic home with apple trees and raspberry bushes, mere skeletons on that chilly fall evening, but next spring they‘d blossom anew.

We did get this house, and were thrilled. But my parents weren’t. They feared we’d be isolated. I assured them that I could see the neighbor’s house from the living room window (I learned later that this was actually our shed). The news comforted them – and they may even visit someday.

We survived house hunting season. But that was only the beginning. Now we face three more seasons in Maine – mud season, blizzard season and blackfly season.

(Chrissy Laws is a freelance writer living in Linneus, Maine, U.S.A.)

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