Coming Home

Saturday will mark 20 years since the chilly day I arrived at this peculiar little house on a peculiar little farm in the Appalachian foothills. When you meet people they always ask what brought you here, and in my case, there’s no particular answer. The currents of life, I suppose. It was a gamble, as life tends to be.

Early on, I sat down and started to write about it all, beginning with my departure from the northeast. Here’s some of it, followed by some thoughts from 20 years later.

Rear-view mirrors are funny things. They can be a source of dread, as when they inform us of the flashing red lights atop the trooper’s car. They can make us angry, when the car behind is so close that we can tell that the driver is wearing a button-down shirt. They can confuse us, when the lettering on the front of the plumbing supply truck is painted on backwards so that it reads correctly in the mirror.

They can impart a sense of power, when we watch a car we’ve passed grow smaller, and a sense of safety — we now know it’s okay to change back to the right lane — or relief, when we take a final glance at the terrible wreckage which held up traffic for an hour.

As the sun set on the last night of January, my rear-view mirror was a sad place to look, for it conveyed lost dreams and wasted years. As I rounded the curve in the long driveway and the house receded from view, I wasn’t entirely successful in an attempt to avoid thinking of what I was seeing for the last time.

My drive the next day went smoothly enough, with only the amount of attention as necessary for safety paid to the rear-view mirror.

January 2005 was as warm in southeastern Ohio as January 2025 has been cold. The snow — there had been a lot of it — melted and flooded everything. It surprised me (then, but not now — I have experience with them since that time) that the local newspapers paid little attention to the flooding. I did not have that luxury, in that I had to pick my route carefully as I approached town, lest I be blocked by the water.

Through luck more than anything else I was able to get to the real estate office before it closed, and got the keys to the house I had agreed to purchase. Armed with only the GPS gadget — GPS of 2005 was much less than GPS of 2025 — I went looking for my new house, getting lost in the process. It should have been alarming, but I was excited, so I enjoyed it. I ended up on a road suitable only for livestock. I forded a small “bridge” that was really a concrete slab covered in thick ice, at a bit of an angle. I could easily have slid off into the small creek under it, but as I mentioned, luck was with me that day. Just before I gave up hope, I rounded a curve and there was my house, the house I’m in as I write this.

The keys I had been given worked, and I opened the door to a surprisingly warm house, set up to be welcoming by the people from whom I was buying it. I’d arranged for electricity and phone service, but the heat was something I did not expect.

The house had a natural gas furnace, fed by a pipe from across the street where there was a gas well. In looking at real estate ads here, one often saw the notation, “free gas.” I did not get free gas, though, because I had not bought the part of the owners’ land that included the well. It wasn’t for sale. But I had free gas for a few months, until I made other arrangements, due to the kindness of the owners to which I was first exposed when there was a warm house waiting for me. (I should confess that I kept the house warmer then than I have since I’ve been paying for my own propane.)

In my car I had brought only some essentials. The rest would arrive in a few days in one of those short semi trailers we often see, two per tractor, on the highways. (The driveway is steep, and the driver put deep ruts in it as he attempted — ultimately unsuccessfully — to back the trailer up it. In so doing his tires dug ruts in the driveway that have defied 20 years’ efforts to fill them.)

I brought in the things that were in the car. Not essential by anyone else’s definition of the word were the jade plants, which were parts of a plant I purchased on East 86^th^ Street in New York for $1.49 in 1986. But I wanted them. They were a connection to a time and place long gone from my life.

What I had not brought was much bedding. A cheap sleeping bag that I used to keep on the boat when I had a boat, a pillow — that was it. But the carpeting in the living room was well padded, so it would be an acceptable place to sleep.

I thought I should call friends back east, to let them know I’d gotten here safely. I unpacked the phone I had brought and discovered I had forgotten a phone cord. So even though there were probably 50 of them in the semi, I set out in the darkness to drive back to town, to become the only person in recorded history to go to Radio Shack to pay $5 for a dime-a-dozen phone cord. It was okay — I realized I was hungry, so I stopped at Burger King and got a couple of Whoppers, my first meal in my new house. They were still warm when I got here after the half-hour’s drive. They were among the best things I ever ate.

I called my friends, who thought it quite brave of me to move west of the Hudson River. Then I settled in. I had a small Sony television-radio. Thinking I could get a sense of the place, I turned it on and found that there was no receivable television station here and no local radio station available after dark. Ghastly by eastern standards but for some reason it made me smile.

So my first night here, 20 years ago this Saturday night, I ate Burger King while listening to WCBS-AM from New York. The day’s travel and the broadcast made the country seem small.

My first morning here the sky was gray, as it would be every day for the rest of February. It wasn’t especially cold, and there was a pattern: every morning there would be a half inch or so of new snow. It would be gone by noon. Of more lasting effect was the lack of sunshine on my sense of direction. With no sun to guide me, I burned into my depths the directions as I felt they were. Therefore, from that month to this, it has seemed as if the sun rises in the south — southwest in the winter — and sets in the north. I do not know why my mind decided upon this, but my subconscious is a stubborn thing and 20 years later it still holds fast to that view.

Also that first morning, the owners stopped by. Cordial and friendly (though she was a bit suspicious; they had been burned once before by someone who claimed to want to buy their house), they gave me an operating tour of the house and a general tour of the 12 acres on which it is located. They had moved a half hour away, to be near her sister, but still had the property across the street, the parcel with the gas well, so I’d see then from time to time.

They would prove helpful over the coming months. I’d hear talking and look out the window. There they would be, with a neighbor or two, standing in the intersection and happily talking. I’d wander down, be welcomed, and would get a lesson in how things are in this part of the world. For instance, if you’re invited to dinner it’s important to make sure to get an exact time, because for many old families in this region, dinner is the meal served at noon.

One day a car passed and everyone waved. “I don’t know half the people five miles down the road anymore,” the former lady of the house said to me. “You you have to wave anyway.” I am happy to say that the tradition remains. Though homes are far apart, there is a sense of community and assurance of emergency aid resulting from such greetings.

It amazed me how quickly I became acclimated. Back east, I would have gotten angry if a car in front of me were going more slowly than I thought appropriate. Here, oddly, it crossed my mind that I was no more important than the person ahead of me, and was surprised at the sense of peace that imparted. It seems to be a local habit; in 20 years minus two days here I have heard horns honked in anger no more than six times total, and always when the local university is in session, so the honking was probably done by someone from out of town. When I stopped in to the local Lowe’s I was barely inside before I was greeted by a smiling employee.

It is an unusual place, where I’ve been blessed far beyond anything I’ve earned.

There was a strange fellow who would walk up and down the highway daily, a giant big-eared hulk of a guy who would grin and wave like crazy at passing cars, on his way to the store to buy some pop and a bag of candy. One day in late February I passed him on my way to town, and saw him again on the way back, when it was cold and getting dark. I stopped and asked him if he wanted a ride. He seemed grateful but wasn’t entirely certain where he lived. We finally got it sorted out and I took him home.

A couple of weeks later I stopped at the bank to open an account. As I was in one of the glass-walled offices making he arrangements I noticed that the several cute young tellers were looking at me and giggling as they spoke to each other.

After the paperwork was done I went to deposit a check. “You’re the one who gave Danny [last name] a ride!” She spoke with delighted awe. “Is that his name?” I replied. Over the next couple of minutes they crowded around. They knew where I lived, who had lived here before, and wanted to know more. I think I satisfied their curiosity and from then until now I’ve always enjoyed going to the bank, though the cast of characters has changed.

(Poor Danny was famous because he terrified people. He might awaken on a summer’s night and decide to take a walk and, if he saw a porch swing that looked inviting, stop and make a breeze for himself by swinging back and forth, frightening the residents awakened by the squeaking of the chain. I thought he was harmless, and for as long as I knew him he was, but a few years later he seemed to lose his grasp and was sent to live in a place where he was supervised.)

It was some weeks before I got satellite television (even longer before I got internet better than dialup), but I had my VCR and the entire series of “Northern Exposure,” the best series ever. So I settled in accompanied by the sounds and pictures of that program. Nor could it have been more appropriate. There was here, but for the moose. It put me in the right mood.

Years have come and gone, but the mood hasn’t changed.

Driving the back road looking for this place 20 years ago Saturday night, I was filled with hope.

I can say now with certainty that the hope was realized beyond my imagining.

And today the rear-view mirror reveals no sadness.