Returning Home

by Mary Carmen

  I talked to Muzz about a trip to Wayne County.

  “Not my territory,” he said. “It’s time for me to take a little vacation, anyway. I’ll be here when you return to Pittsburgh.”

  Muzz-the-Bald came to Pittsburgh to the hotel where Muzz-the-Greybeard and I were staying. He drove a very fancy old red Corvette with a new motor, which he assured me was the best car on the road.

  Muzz helped me load my suitcases into the small trunk. The car had only two seats, and I worried my long legs would not fit.

  “Fanny down first,” Muzz said. “Then, just tuck your legs under the dashboard.”

  It was remarkably comfortable.

  We drove across Pennsylvania on the major northern route and headed toward Wayne County at Scranton. We found a rustic hotel in Honesdale, and we settled in for the night.

  The next day we walked to the Sutherland Realty office, just a few blocks from the hotel. I had several advertisements from that office in my hand and I wanted to see the properties.

  Mrs. Gladys Cartwright was on duty, and she talked to us about the listings.

  “Oh, no, you don’t want any of those,” she said. “The only things we advertise are the places we can’t sell, places that have problems. What we want to do here is to write down your requirements and look at what matches. We have several wonderful properties.”

  I sighed. All my research had been for nothing.

  “Oh, no,” Mrs. Cartwright said. “You have a better idea of what you want. Here’s a nine-hundred-square-foot condominium that is really sharp. Just right for a single person.”

  “What I want is three parcels of between one hundred and two hundred acres each, with no parcel being more than thirty miles from any other,” I said. “I certainly would like to see places with houses already built, but I am open to any other parcel if a large house can be constructed on it. I want the elevations to be at least fifteen hundred feet.”

  Mrs. Cartwright tapped her white-booted foot and looked skyward. “We have several listings you may want to consider,” she said at last.

  She continued, “In the middle of the twentieth century and lasting until about 2020, Wayne County was part of a marketing scheme to get working people to spend their honeymoons here. Of course, people don’t marry much anymore, particularly working-class people, so the tourist dollars dried up.”

  “I’m not sure a honeymoon hotel would be on enough land,” I said.

  “Except for here,” she replied. “These places had one large house, the lodge, and lots of little cabins with next to no amenities for the honeymooners. Many of them were on large parcels. As I said, we have four on our lists now.”

  “Why so many?” Muzz asked. “How long have they been on the market?”

  “Forever,” Mrs. Cartwright sighed. “The sellers expect people to pay them for the improvements, but buyers consider all these little cabins to be nothing but detriments to the properties’ values.”

  Mrs. Cartwright bent over a long file drawer and pulled out several fat folders. She opened one and put it on the desk.

  “For example, this place has 240 acres, a stream, beautiful wooded walkways, and all utilities.”

  “Sounds interesting,” I said, and Muzz nodded.

  “It also has a decaying lodge with ten small bedrooms, a huge kitchen with very outdated equipment, a dining room that used to overlook the little pond before all the windows were broken, and floors that are absolutely unreliable. You two are not heavy enough to fall through to the basement, but I certainly would not ask you to chance it. In addition, the bathroom fixtures are not in any way modern.”

  She stopped to draw a breath and continued, “As for the twenty tiny cabins, you would have to be a dewy-eyed newlywed to find any charm in them at all. They are not insulated, the showers are not enclosed, and the main rooms do not have enough space for a large bed. And the seller wants good money for these improvements!”

  I certainly liked the sound of 240 acres with a stream, and I knew I could hire a wrecking ball.

  “Do you have a movie we could take back to our hotel?” I asked.

  “We have at least two movies on each one,” Mrs. Cartwright said. She started to paw through the files of movies in another long drawer. “Here’s one, and here’s another.”

  We wrote down the particulars about each property, including the asking price and some details about prior offers, and we drove back to the hotel, promising to return the next day.

  Talking to the Assessor

  After a nice lunch in nearby Hawley, we drove back to Honesdale to see the county assessor to check on the tax records for each of the four properties. I have found real estate agents sometimes have an optimistic view of the taxes paid and of liens and easements.

  The assessor’s clerk helped us find ten years of tax information about each property. As we were leaving, I saw a sign that read, “Ask us about prepaying your property taxes.”

  “Do you have any written information about your prepayment policy?” I asked the clerk.

  “Oh, yes, sir,” he said. “You just present the parcel number. We have a program that calculates the amount you can pay ahead for any number of years. Let’s say you wanted to provide for yourself until you were one hundred. You just figure out the number of years, forty or fifty, and give us that number and the parcel number. Just takes a minute. I can do it right here.”

  I gave the clerk the four parcel numbers and the number of one hundred for the years.

  “Highest number I’ve ever entered,” he said. “But the system accepted it. It’s calculating. Here’s the printout. Jesus boom! That’s quite a figure! Quite a figure, let me tell you!”

  “Calculate for one thousand years, will you?” I asked.

  After a few more seconds, four more sheets printed. “It’s essentially the same number,” the clerk said, wide-eyed.

  I folded up the printouts and put them with my tax research notes.

  Later Muzz asked me why I wanted to prepay the taxes. “Keep your money as long as you can, that’s my motto. Served me well, too.”

  I shook my head and said, “I can’t imagine what the next hundred or thousand years will bring. I want to leave each of my children a home, but I want to make sure each child is provided for into the future. The taxes on these places may make them too expensive for older people to maintain. The taxes for one thousand years are very nearly the same as for one hundred years because the county is withdrawing the accumulated interest and is not taking much of the principal.”

  Buying Wayne County

  That evening we looked at the real estate movies. Each of the places had charm, and each one was within fifteen miles of Honesdale. I added up the asking prices of my favorite three and tripled that amount to account for wrecking and construction. Then I added the one-thousand-year county taxes. The total was about thirty percent of my capital.

  Mrs. Cartwright was waiting for us the next morning. “Want to see anything?” she asked.

  “Everything,” I said.

  We rode a truck-like vehicle into the forests north of Honesdale and saw each property. The beauty of the land took my breath away. The buildings were dilapidated, as advertised, but they had a rustic charm to their design. I took a great many pictures and added more information to my notes.

  When we reached the real estate office, Mrs. Cartwright said, “When you are ready to see anything else, let me know. I’ll be looking at everything that comes up with you in mind.”

  “No need,” I said. “I want to make offers on three of the parcels we saw this morning.”

  Preparing to Build in Wayne County

  Muzz and I drove back to Pittsburgh in time for my Sunday visit to New Kensington. My mother recognized I had a new friend with me, but she still was unable to remember my name.

  Mr. Eyres was making good progress, though. By the end of September of 2110, many of the reproductions were in place and the temporary furniture had been returned to the warehouses. The s
itting room was very comfortable and it looked similar to my suite in the spacecraft.

  That next week I took my Wayne County pictures to Mr. Eyres’s store to ask for advice.

  “They have to come down, down, down,” he insisted. “Full of termites and rusted pipes. Start from scratch, that’s my advice.”

  “It’s the design I wanted to show you. Does this style have a name?” I asked.

  “Kind of a blown up Cape Cod,” he said at last. “Many Cape Code elements, but with extensions.”

  “Who could design something similar, to be built from scratch?”

  “You willing to go to Scranton? My friend J. L. Johnson is an architect there, and he could get you started, anyway,” Mr. Eyres advised.

  The next day Muzz and I were on the road again, back to the northeast corner of Pennsylvania.

  The architect J. L. Johnson was well established. His offices occupied a busy corner near downtown Scranton, and at least five assistants were scurrying to and fro to fetch things he referenced while he talked.

  Mr. Johnson looked carefully at my pictures, chuckling at the condition of the buildings but admiring the great beauty of the land.

  “I want three houses exactly the same, one to be built on each parcel,” I said. “Each house should have three large bedrooms and a dormitory room for overflow. Each house should be built to last through centuries of these heavy northern Pennsylvania winters.”

  “Are these on spec?” Mr. Johnson asked.

  “No, indeed,” I replied. “These are to be gifts to three of my children as part of their inheritance.”

  “Then, why the same house?” he asked. “Each child surely is different and has different requirements.”

  I sighed. “The only way to avoid family squabbles is for us to build three identical houses. The properties are very similar in value. I will offer all three to the oldest and allow him to choose. Then, I will offer a choice of the remaining two to the middle child. I want the youngest child to have no complaint.”

  Mr. Johnson agreed to develop some ideas within the following two weeks and to send a package with drawings to the hotel where Muzz and I were staying near Pittsburgh.

  Looking at the Green Mountains

  By the first of October of 2110, I was ready to look for land for my Octula children’s compound on Earth. I had decided to find a large parcel in the Green Mountains of Vermont and build a large lodge and five sturdy cabins.

  Muzz-the-Bald and I set off for Vermont on a Sunday afternoon, after my visit to my mother. We drove on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and its extensions to Albany, backtracked to Springfield, and drove north to Ludlow, Vermont.

  We stopped at a very small and very rustic inn along the road and found ourselves with two charming rooms and a congenial host. Muzz, after paying for our rooms with his company’s credit card, asked about real estate.

  “Not much land for sale hereabouts,” Mr. Nelson told us. “Mr. Bygott will know, of course. You need to see him.”

  He gave us directions to Mr. Bygott’s office, and we drove toward East Wallingford to see if he could meet with us.

  Mr. Bygott was a wiry, short man with a habit of tilting his head while listening and throwing it forward while he, himself, was speaking. He had bad teeth and wore old clothes to the office.

  “Just seven listings in the whole country,” Mr. Bygott told us. “Nobody wants to sell, and nobody wants to buy. What’s your story?”

  “I want to buy,” I said. “I would like to find a large parcel for a family compound near or in the Green Mountains.”

  Mr. Bygott interrupted with, “Everything in Vermont is near or in the Green Mountains. Not much else here.”

  “I would like to see what you have available near here,” I insisted.

  “Used to the cold, are you? We like a good winter here. That’s the reason things are so green,” he told me.

  “I believe we are used to the cold. My children were born on Octula, although they went to high school in Vermont.”

  “We ain’t that cold,” he admitted.

  Mr. Bygott showed us the films for all seven properties. Three were houses on small lots, and two were condominiums in Rutland. The other two were worth looking into further, I thought, because they were each over one hundred acres and near the national forest.

  “On this on,” Mr. Bygott said, “there’s just one parcel between you and the federal lands. On the other, a small corner of the property is adjacent to the forest. Which one?”

  Muzz was jumpy. He finally said, “Could you show us both these properties? And, do you know anybody who is thinking of selling something appropriate but who might need some incentive?”

  I was dismayed to hear Muzz talking so loosely about my money, but his comment reminded the old realtor of a landowner who was getting close to retirement.

  We made plans to meet the next day for tours of the two properties, and Mr. Bygott assured us he would look into the idea of the unlisted land.

  The next day we toured the two listed properties, but I did not believe either of these was private enough for a family compound. Mr. Bygott told us he had an appointment the following week to talk to the landowner who was ready to retire. Did we have an idea of what we wanted to spend?

  This was a ticklish subject with me because I did not want to reveal my financial position until I had found something I wanted and had an asking price from the seller. I gave an evasive answer and waved my hands about my head.

  We left the area with an agreement from Mr. Bygott that he would call me in Pittsburgh with any news about other large properties he heard about.

  Calling Kenny

  Muzz-the-Bald drove us back to the hotel in Pittsburgh and turned me over to Muzz-the Greybeard. Also waiting at the hotel was a large package from Mr. Johnson.

  In the package were three complete plot plans and the preliminary ideas for a house that would be suitable for all three. Muzz and I spread these papers over the table in the sitting room that separated our bedrooms, and I showed him the many pictures I had taken in Wayne County.

  “It’s just spectacular, particularly in September,” he said. “So much water and so many trees.”

  We looked at the proposed house and agreed it would be a suitable dwelling for nearly anybody. It had large windows toward the views, an impressive entrance, and enough interior space for a large family. The attic was the dormitory, and the basement was a storage room. I would have liked that house myself.

  “I think it is time to call those children,” Muzz told me. “You have put it off for nearly six months. Don’t give their mother any more time to poison their minds.”

  That evening I dialed the telephone number Maude had given me for Kenny. He answered quickly, and I said, “Kenneth Waltrop? This is your father, Anthony.”

  “Yea, Mom said you would be calling. She doesn’t want me to see you,” a man replied. Kenny was forty-one in 2110.

  “I understand her feelings,” I said. “However, she can’t complain about a telephone call, can she?”

  “Guess not. When do you return to Octula?”

  I hesitated. Certainly I hoped every day for a message from Anna asking me to return, but I had heard nothing from her since the day I left, nearly a year before.

  “My plans are still up in the air,” I lied. “Tell me about what is happening with you. Do you have a family?”

  “Not yet,” he answered. “I am still single, but I have hopes of finding someone who would be a suitable partner.”

  “What do you do? Did you go to college?” I wondered.

  “I am an associate professor of mathematics at the University of Pittsburgh. I finished my undergraduate work in 2091 and my graduate work in 2097. I have been at Pitt since 2099.”

  I gave a small sigh of relief. He sounded as if he had a responsible job and a good education.

  Kenny continued, “Yes, I went to Bucknell University as a freshman. Mom was willing to pay for the first semester, but she sai
d I had to apply for scholarships in order to stay. Then a scholarship became available for a Pittsburgh resident that paid all my expenses…tuition, room, board, books, an allowance…for the four years. That same scholarship fund also paid my way through MIT until I got my doctorate.”

  I was astounded by this good fortune. I asked Kenny, “What was the name of this scholarship?”