Letter to the Former Homeowner

First, let me just say that we found your dog, Butch. Quite by accident, actually. I'd love to be able to tell you that he's in a better place now, but the fact is that he's still very much in the backyard — right where you buried him.

Thanks for that.

I don't know, but I think if you bury a family pet in the yard, you ought to either A) not be lazy about it, and dig down below the frost line, or B) have to exhume it upon sale of said residence. I mean, old Butch was still a bit, well, leathery when stumbled upon. Sure, the collar — with his nametag still attached — spiked to the fencepost should have tipped us off, but back in that shady corner of the yard, we didn't exactly notice it until after shovel struck carcass.

Also, I found the handgun in the basement. You left that too. Boy, you forget how heavy those things are. It scared me for a bit, until I looked at it closely enough to break it down and realize it shot BBs, not bullets. Which explains not only all of the BBs rolling around the third floor, but the pockmarks in the window molding as well.

What else? Oh. Newspaper does not insulation make. Darn stuff is flammable, see. Inside the walls of an old balloon construction wood-framed house it's called tinder. We've since added real (read: that with both a far greater R factor and ignition point than newspaper) insulation.

And the aerosol can of DAP foam you left inside the bathroom wall. Boy, glad I didn't hit that sucker with the Sawzall. God-awful mess that would have been.

I know it wasn't you who notched the first floor joists so deeply, but thanks for knocking out that pesky 8-by support column in the basement. It's not like the foundation couldn't support the extra weight. Oh right. Yes, it is like that. Well, I put up some steel lally columns to alleviate the over-stress.

The threat of an impending slow collapse of the house was perhaps what caused you folks to stow so many crucifixes around the place. We found all manner of them in hallways, and closets, and cupboards, and crawl spaces  — and not a damn one glow-in-the-dark.

The flowering pear tree out the back door. Maybe you could not have foreseen it growing to its 30-foot height when you planted its root ball. In a half-barrel planter. But, see, growing is what trees do.

Don't get me wrong. We do, ultimately, love the house, despite its often frustrating 1880's character. We paid you fair market value for it. (And we do want to thank you for letting us know the dead tree out back hid a live electrical conduit. Because we got the electrician out here before the tree removal guys, and that saved us a possible wrongful death lawsuit.) It's just that, well, you could have at least left behind the stack of vintage late-'70s and early-'80s gentlemen's magazines we spied in the basement during our initial walkthrough. I was looking forward to reliving much of my youth. And then selling them on eBay for a tidy sum. But of course you took those. Bastards.

Comments

[dan]

Alas poor Butch, we fed him well . . .