There I was peacefully napping on a Sunday afternoon, as many nearly 70 year old guys will do, and all of a sudden my love little bride wakes me up somewhat aggressively which is unusual. So I lay there thinking, which of the neighbor ladies have dropped by for afternoon tea and why do I have to be involved? But, then again, she was pretty insistent so I figured I had better go see what was so important that I should be disturbed like that!
Well, I couldn’t think of anything that would call for me dressing any different than usual, so on went the boat shoes, shorts and tee shirt. I enter the living room to see three grinning faces. One was my bride Pat, and the other two belonged to a couple we vaguely knew. My first thought was just how much it’s going to cost me to get rid of this smiling couple! Even before I joined them, Pat almost shouts out that they want to buy our house. I thought that’s not anything to wake me up from a nap for because that’s just plain silly. When we decided to move off Old Hickory Lake in Hendersonville from a multi-story house, we decided to design our retirement home from the ground up with everything we could think of and then some. Let’s see now…one level, all hardwood floors, doors that could be wheelchair accessible if you want to be morbid; my man cave off the master suite so I don’t have to go far to be alone; a car wash size shower with dual shower heads…and it too is wheelchair accessible; a screened porch for me and a pool for her; and, finally pet doors for the dog and cat…low maintenance and doesn’t interfere with my sleeping! Keep in mind that this was supposed to be our last house. It has an office, guest suite, and oversized garage for my toys…you name it, we have it…so why would I want to sell it!
The house was perfect…EXCEPT as my lovely bride pointed out…Savannah lives 55 miles away. She is our lovely little granddaughter who lives one town below Nashville and we live one town above Nashville. She is the only grandchild near enough to see weekly…the others moved off and left us! We go for visits as often as possible, but distance is a great factor.
So as any strong southern male with generations of strong southern males behind him, I said with great charity…that will be fine dear…or as I learned to say long ago…yes, dear we will sell the house. One hour later we had hammered out the details of the purchase. Well, the women had hammered out the details of the purchase. We all know they run the world! This was on Sunday afternoon. Monday morning I went to our attorney, had the contract drawn up, and it was signed on Tuesday! Now some men who are closing in on 70 might be concerned that they were now homeless, but not me. I married a little human dynamo Irish woman with an MBA in finance from the University of Notre Dame…yes we are a divided family…MS State and the SEC vs. Notre Dame. While watching the evening news on Sunday night, Pat was on the computer looking for a house in Murfreesboro, TN, the home of one Savannah Elizabeth Ledwell!
On Monday morning as Pat brings me my coffee, which is no big deal as she does that every morning, she said we were driving to Murfreesboro after breakfast. I thought it wouldn’t hurt to look around since we were homeless and she had promised me pancakes. We drove down the familiar 55 miles after pancakes at IHOP, and only then did I realize we had a specific destination in mind. Keep in mind she is Irish, red haired and runs my life. So we drove up to a lovely home in a gated community of cluster homes and there sits a real estate waiting to show us around. Remember I told you she runs my life and she’s Irish. We go in, look around, designate the room for my man cave and her office, note that it already has a screened porch and a separate deck, there is a swimming pool and tennis court, a beautiful creek running through a park like area just below the house that the Association maintains, and just a little cosmetic fixing up (like a new kitchen!) she says…so, she turns to me with those big blue eyes after all of 15 minutes and says “it’s perfect, daddy can I have it?”…or at least that’s how I recall it…she says in her direct way to the real estate agent, we’ll take it but given the amount of work, we are going to give you a very aggressive price, much lower than asking…told you she was the brains of this operation!
I have to stand on principle, after all we had only looked at one house for all of 15 minutes so of course I said, “yes, dear”. So within 24 hours we had sold and bought two homes. Stay tuned this only makes 13 homes in 30 years…she promises this is the last one…stay tuned.
